


Broken Mirror

by nibelheiim



Series: The Truth Will Set You Free [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Angst, Cloud Strife Needs a Hug, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, POV Tifa Lockhart, Rated For Violence, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Romance, Some Humor, and they were ROOMMATES, mostly canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24193321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nibelheiim/pseuds/nibelheiim
Summary: Tifa Lockhart is settled into her routine in Midgar when the sudden reappearance of a familiar face turns everything on its head.  Now, as they share tight quarters, she tries to piece together the man she knows in the present and the boy she remembers from her past in order to see the bigger picture.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Series: The Truth Will Set You Free [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1746100
Comments: 75
Kudos: 334





	1. five years later...

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all!!! This is my first EVER (publicly posted) CloTi fic!!!  
> Hoping for this to be part of a larger series that tells the story of FFVII from Tifa's point of view, with maaaaybe some minor deviations from canon? We'll see.  
> Rated M for Violence!
> 
> credit to @lisaflowers for being WONDERFUL and proofreading for me! <3

* * *

It’s been five years, and Tifa still has nightmares.

Not every night--not anymore, at least. But somehow, that makes them worse. She can’t prepare for them now, because she never knows when they’ll happen. When she falls asleep, it’s either a dreamless void, or a reenactment of the worst day of her life.

It always starts the same, with the fire. Tifa runs down the stairs and out the door of our little cottage the moment she smells smoke. She looks everywhere for her father, but the kitchen is already engulfed in flames. The ceiling banisters come crashing down and block her way in. She has to escape, and she hopes to God that he made it out before her.

The heat is so intense that she can feel it on her cheeks, even now. That’s why, at first, she doesn’t understand that it’s all a dream. It feels so _real_. When she walks too close to the flames, they singe the ends of her long hair; when she breathes in too much smoke, it feels like her chest is on fire, and she struggles to take in air. The smell is a combination of burning wood, blood, and something metallic and rancid: Mako. They’d been smelling Mako from the broken reactor for days, but it’s even worse now. It’s enough to make her choke.

Two Shinra guards lie, dead or injured, in the square. The screams of the people--Tifa’s neighbors, her friends--echo across the plaza and suddenly stop. She’s frozen. She stops and thinks, _Who could have done this? Who could have killed all these people?_

And then, just like that, she already knows who it is. Sephiroth.

But Tifa doesn't see Sephiroth. She doesn't see her dad. And then, like a knife through her heart, it all hits her. _The reactor_.

She runs as fast as her legs can carry her. Through town, up the mountain, across the bridge. All the scenery speeds by in a flash, and suddenly she’s standing in front of the Mako reactor. Someone broke through the door, leaving only a mangled piece of metal on the catwalk. A clean, straight line cuts the metal in half.

Every part of her body is numb. She stands there for just a moment, trying to make her body move forward. But she’s so scared that she can’t move at all.

That’s when the SOLDIER approaches her, the one who escorted Sephiroth to the village a few days ago. He’s got a massive sword slung on his back and hair like the night sky. He grabs Tifa before she can step inside and shakes her, pleading, “Just _get out_ of here! You don’t know who you’re dealing with!”

But she doesn't listen to him. She doesn't even really process what he’s saying. She simply shakes loose from his tight grip on her shoulders and leaves him behind.

When she reaches the catwalk above the Mako pool, she sees her father on the other end, in a motionless heap on the floor. She doesn't see the pool of blood and the deadly sword lying beside him until she steps closer.

She kneels down; she can’t even cry, because she’s in shock. In a desperate attempt to grab at hope, she checks for a pulse--and nothing.

Tifa hears her voice out loud, like a matra, but she doesn't feel in control of her words. “Sephiroth… SOLDIER… Mako… _Shinra_...” She brushes her hand against the hilt of Sephiroth’s sword and grabs it so tightly that her knuckles turn white. She thinks about the many people killed by this blade, the pain they must have felt. The thought alone makes her hand shake uncontrollably.

“I’m sick of it all...” she whispers to herself. “I’m ending it here.”

Tifa takes the sword and rushes to the next room to find Sephiroth there. His presence is foreboding--she can feel the power in the room they’re standing in. He’s dressed in all black, like the Angel of Death. There isn’t a drop of blood on his clothes. He must hear her come in, but he doesn’t turn around--not even when she yells, “ _Why_ did you _do_ this, Sephiroth?” Because Tifa is inconsequential to him--just something taking up space, something for him to mow over.

She feels a burning, searing anger well up inside her. She can’t think. She can’t feel. And she attacks.

But it’s all for nothing. As soon as she gets close enough, he wrestles the sword from her hands and turns it on her. One swift cut across Tifa’s stomach and chest sends her tumbling back down the stairs. When she lands, she tries to get up, only for her vision to blur. She touches one hand to her stomach just below the sternum where she feels a siering pain and it comes back dark red. 

She hears the voice of that SOLDIER in the distance, but she doesn't ever see him; by then, the whole world has almost disappeared entirely.

Sephiroth didn’t even turn around all the way, and Tifa didn’t even put a single scratch on him.

But the dream doesn’t end in the reactor. It doesn’t end in the town, or the Midgar hospital where she’ll eventually wake up. 

It ends with a color: blue, like the deepest part of the ocean.

And then, she wakes up.

* * *

Another restless sleep.

On the days she has this nightmare, it’s hard for Tifa to even leave her bed. For a long time, she just stares at the ceiling of her dingy apartment and focuses on her breathing. _In four… hold seven… out eight._ It’s an exercise Zangan taught her a long time ago, when she studied martial arts. Every time she’d lose herself, or make a careless mistake, Zangan would yell, “Breathe, Tifa! Breathe!” And she’d do this very same ritual over and over again until she cleared her head.

_In four… hold seven… out eight…_

Outside her door is the big city--Midgar. When she lived in Nibelheim, she’d read about Midgar all the time in the papers. About the wonderful Shinra reactors that blessed the whole city with light. About the hustle and bustle of corporate men and women commuting to work by train. About the feat of engineering, the 70-story monolith called the Shinra building that marked the heart of the city.

Never once did Tifa read about the slums--where she ended up.

_In four… hold seven… out eight…_

Tifa knows that she can’t stall forever. She grabs blindly at her nightstand and finds Barret’s shopping list there. In his scraggly handwriting, he’s written down items needed at the bar. _Soda. Corel whiskey. Napkins._ The night before, he’d asked Tifa to run these small errands as he had errands of his own--and Tifa knew better than to ask about his plans, when his face became somber like that.

Tifa’s bar Seventh Heaven, the only home she really has in the Sector 7 slums, serves as a front for Barret’s militia group, Avalanche. Admittedly, Tifa doesn’t know very much about Avalanche. They have two goals: the first is to save the Planet, and the second is to take down the Shinra Corporation. Barret tells Tifa all the time that these goals are one and the same. “Take Shinra down, and the rest will follow!” he’ll shout enthusiastically, from one end of the bar. “They’re the ones suckin’ the Planet dry!”

Mako, planetology, the reactors. It’s all foreign to Tifa. But she remembers a time when she was small, and Mt. Nibel was alive with flowers, trees, animals. _Life_. Before Shinra built their reactor there. Everything died, and the air in the town reeked with that undeniable Mako smell.

Tifa always agrees to help Barret and Avalanche. Perhaps that’s her small way of getting revenge.

She gets ready quickly, efficiently. There’s not much in her apartment, and she doesn’t have many clothes. What she does have is essential and necessary; she can’t afford to splurge with the bar and the apartment always needing repairs.

She puts on her clothes standing in front of the full length mirror on the wall of her tiny studio. She chooses something comfortable, breathable, and easy to move in. As always, when she looks in the mirror, her eyes can’t help but gravitate toward the scare--a hard, discolored line of skin, six inches long, running from the center of her chest to the bottom of her rib cage. When Tifa runs her fingers over it, she can imagine the sting, cold and unrelenting and siering, as if it’s happening to her now. She _should_ feel as if this scar is a badge of honor--after all, she _lived_. She may be the only one. But instead, she thinks of it as a brutal reminder.

Today, Tifa dons a coat to protect her from the harsh Midgar winter and heads for the station.

Midgar winters bring no snow--at least, they don’t underneath the plate. When Tifa looks up, she can see the plate staring back at her, suspended three hundred meters above her head by gargantuan supporting pillars. The plate looms like a shadow; it blocks the sun from resting warmly on her face and hides the sky behind mangled metal. The only light that shines on the slums comes from the sun lamps, gigantic, harsh white lights that radiate down on them like spotlights. In five years, Tifa can count on one hand the times she’s seen the sun; she’s seen the stars even less, since the lights from Midgar’s many buildings and structures wash them away. Tifa misses the stars the most--back home, she loved looking up at the night sky and picturing what it’d be like to be among them.

Seventh Heaven is on Tifa’s route to the station. Even this early, Barret is already awake, and he stands on the bar’s wooden porch as he gets Marlene ready for school. Barret is tall, large, and intimidating--but Tifa knows him well, and deep down he’s got a soft center. Especially when it comes to Marlene. She’s his everything. Tifa doesn’t know how Marlene came into Barret’s care, but it doesn’t really matter; whatever the circumstances, they’ve become a perfect little family.

Marlene spots Tifa first. Clad in a pink dress, her backpack hanging from her shoulders, she shouts, “Tifa! It’s time for school!”

“Sure is,” Tifa tells her, patting Marlene’s head when she gets close enough. “You better hurry or else you’ll be _late_.” When she says the word late, Tifa sneaks a cheeky glance at Barret, who returns it sheepishly.

“She said she wanted pancakes for breakfast,” explains Barret. “How am I s’posed to say no to my little angel?”

Marlene takes off in the direction of the schoolhouse, which is within sight of the bar. As soon as she’s inside, Barret turns his attention to Tifa. “You gonna swing by the bar later?” he asks, sitting at one of the outdoor tables, laying his arm--the one augmented with a machine gun where his right hand should be--on the table’s surface. Tifa doesn’t know the story of his gun arm, and at this point she knows better than to ask.

Tifa nods. “Of course. It’s Saturday night--busiest night of the week!”

Barret nods. “Good. If it wasn’t for you… I dunno how we’d keep the lights on in this place.”

Tifa thinks Barret gives her too much credit. After all, Barret protects the place. Jessie fixes leaks and broken pipes for free. Biggs and Wedge hand out flyers all over town to get people to come in.

“We gotta talk to you,” adds Barret. “Biggs, Wedge, Jessie, and me. We wanna tell you about the plan going forward.”

Tifa’s smile wavers a little. She nods at Barret. “Okay.”

Of course, Tifa knows what he’s talking about--the reactor bombing. Barret and the others have been planning for months. Jessie sources explosives from a mole at Shinra headquarters, and had them delivered to the bar in the dead of night. She took them into the bar’s secret basement level--accessible only by a rigged pinball machine-turned-elevator--and spends hours down there now crafting a bomb. Wedge, too, began stockpiling assault rifles and ammunition for the fight ahead. Some nights, when the bar is particularly empty, Barret and Biggs will sneak away into the kitchen and mull over a map of Mako Reactor #1, tracing routes in and out with chalk and erasing them until they’re satisfied.

A few weeks ago, it looked like the plan wouldn’t go through. Barret’s talk with the higher-ups at Avalanche failed miserably; they vowed to separate Barret’s small Sector 7 sect from the bigger movement if Barret intended on going through with the attack, providing them with no support going forward. Barret said afterwards, “We’re just too _visionary_ for them! They can’t see the bigger picture!” For a while, Tifa hoped that maybe Barret and the others would be discouraged. She wanted Shinra to get what they deserved, of course--but she couldn’t help thinking about the people of Sector 1, the normal people who don’t know any better but to live their lives in Shinra’s bubble. She worried for their sake.

Unfortunately, it looks like Barret’s decided otherwise.

Tifa waves goodbye to Barret and makes her way to the station with greater haste. She feels a knot in her stomach now that wasn’t there before. She thinks, _What if the power goes out on Sector 1? How will all those people survive? What about the hospitals? The trains?_ She knows what Barret would tell her. He’d say, “Nothing worth fighting for was ever won without sacrifice!” That’s his go-to line these days.

At the train station, a few workers dressed in suits and a Shinra train operator are crowded around the stairs. Tifa doesn’t think much of it--after all, Midgar’s a big place, filled with rowdy people. Commotions at the station, even this early in the morning, happen all the time. In fact, Tifa nearly walks past it without a second glance.

But it’s when the crowd shuffles a little, and she’s finally able to see through it, that she finally stops to take one, curious look.

And that’s when she sees him.

She blinks a few times. She doesn’t trust her eyes--why _would_ she, after seven years of radio silence? Why should she expect to see him here, of all places? But the combination of traits, unique to only him, is undeniable. Blond hair, styled into harsh spikes. Slumped shoulders. A chiseled jawline, almost _harsh_ , coming to a sharp point at the chin.

She can’t believe it. It really is Cloud Strife.

  
  



	2. obligation

* * *

Cloud Strife. 

Tifa often thinks about Cloud Strife. Every once in a while, when she dreams of Nibelheim, she doesn’t see red flames devouring everything; instead, she sees a sky studded in millions of green and blue stars, the plaza bathed in a warm glow from yellow lights behind lit-up windows. She hears the faint chirping of insects, feels the dewy grass on her feet. This is the Nibelheim that reminds her of Cloud Strife--the Nibelheim that she loved.

But the Cloud Strife before her is a far cry from the Cloud Strife she knew. She can picture him as he looked on his last night in town. Gawky, thin, slouched. Long hair tied behind his head in a ponytail. And those big eyes, filled with so much emotion.

Tifa always loved Cloud’s eyes--blue like the deepest part of the ocean.

But they’re different now. She can just make them out from beyond the crowd and Cloud’s heavy lids, hiding them away. His eyes are surely still blue but a fluorescent blue. They glow from somewhere within.

_ I guess he made it into SOLDIER after all _ , Tifa thinks.

But why is he here? Crumbled on the ground, surrounded by concerned people? How did he  _ get  _ here?

Tifa pushes past the onlookers, desperate to reach him. Something’s not right--Cloud’s unresponsive to the crowd’s shouting, his head simply rolling to one shoulder in reply to each yell and shout for him. Someone has managed to prop him up against the platform, so he’s sitting upright, but Tifa doubts Cloud was conscious when it happened. His eyes are dead, lifeless; his skin is pale and sallow. 

Tifa kneels beside him to get a closer look. She takes note of his labored breathing. He’s wearing his uniform from SOLDIER--they all wear the same standard issue blue coveralls, metal gauntlets, and a single pauldron. Slung on his back is a massive sword. Tifa estimates that the thing must weigh at least fifty pounds, maybe even more.

She lightly places her hand on his forearm and nudges him, cautiously. “Cloud?” She cranes her next to get a good look at his Mako-infused eyes, trying to read what lies behind them. “Cloud, are you okay?”

Cloud seems to register Tifa’s voice, if only a little. He looks in her direction. At first, his expression is blank; it’s not as if he’s seeing Tifa but rather seeing  _ past  _ her. But slowly, surely, the dust settles, and Cloud’s emotions return to him. He furrows his brow and studies Tifa’s face, just for a moment. Then, he raises his brow in surprised realization.

“T-Tifa?” he says, voice hoarse. “Tifa Lockhart?”

Tifa nods encouragingly, giving Cloud a shy smile. “You remember me?”

“Of course.” Cloud struggles to his feet, and Tifa follows suit. When Tifa looks around, she sees that the crowd initially gathered around has dispersed--though she feels a dozen eyes trained on her and Cloud. “How long’s it been? Five years?”

_ Five?  _ Tifa purses her lips.  _ No, not five. It’s been seven. That night at the water tower--that was  _ seven  _ years ago.  _ Tifa doesn’t doubt herself. She thinks that maybe she should say something to Cloud about it, but she takes too long to decide and Cloud has moved on without her.

“Do you…  _ live  _ here?” asks Cloud, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Uh, yeah, I do.” Tifa gestures in the direction she’d just come from. “I’m a bartender, actually--at a bar called Seventh Heaven. It’s just down the road there.” She takes one measured step closer to Cloud, who tenses at her movement and takes an equal step back, almost instinctively. “I see you made it into SOLDIER.”

“Huh?” Cloud looks down at his clothes and then back up in a haze. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. First-Class.” He responds well to Tifa’s question, and she watches as his shoulders relax once more, and he closes the gap between them. A subtle grimace washes over his face. “But, not anymore.”

Tifa raises her brows. “What happened?”

“I quit,” Cloud answers curtly. “About… four and a half years ago.”

_ Four and a half years _ . Tifa wonders where Cloud has  _ been  _ for four and a half years. So many people left Nibelheim before the incident--in search of work, of meaning, of something  _ greater  _ than what the quiet green pastures of their sleepy little town could offer. Tifa manages to reconnect with some of those people, if only briefly, in Midgar. She always found herself asking them about Cloud.  _ Have you heard from him? Do you know what he’s up to?  _ The answer was always, without fail, “ _ No. Could be  _ dead _ for that matter. _ ”

Where could Cloud Strife have been hiding all this time?

“So, what have you been doing?” asks Tifa. “After you quit SOLDIER.”

Cloud pauses for a long moment before answering confidently. “I’m a mercenary now. You know… boring stuff, dangerous stuff. I’ll do anything for the right price.”

“Is that right?” Tifa says, closely watching Cloud’s expressions, trying to read what’s underneath. “So, I guess that means you’ve been all over the place, huh? Seeing the world?”

“Less of it than you’d think.”

“How’d you find yourself in Midgar-- _ Cloud _ ?”

Cloud clutches his head in both hands, contorting his face into a pained expression. When he tries to speak, only a strained, anguished groan comes out. He doubles over, head shaking back and forth, gloves hands buried in his blond hair and clutching his temples tightly. The people loitering around the station begin to stare, some shifting uncomfortably from one leg to another, or shuffling away.

Tifa’s eyes widen at the sight of Cloud--this new, foreign Cloud, made strong by the Mako in his blood--succumbing to such pain. She panics; her mind races while her feet remain planted to the ground, body frozen without any idea of what to do next.  _ What’s wrong with Cloud Strife? What should I do for him? _ She musters the courage to extend one hand, with care, and places it very lightly on Cloud’s arm, feeling him shake beneath it. With a quivering voice, she asks, “Cloud… are you  _ hurt _ ?”

Cloud manages to shake his head, but he can’t form a full sentence. After a few moments, he mutters, “I’m fine.” His body tells Tifa the opposite story.

Cloud’s outburst attracts the attention of the station operator. The man, bearded and clad in a burgundy uniform, steps through a crowd of concerned commuters to make his way toward where Cloud and Tifa stand. With a white-gloved hand, he taps Tifa’s shoulder. When she turns around, she’s met with a stern look.

“Miss, do you know this young man?” the station operator asks her, point-blank.

“Uh, yeah,” Tifa says slowly, unsure that she can even accurately answer such a question.

“Then are you responsible for him?” he continues. “Or should I call Shinra security?”

Tifa stands before him, clad with a blank expression, a million little thoughts racing through her head. She can only be sure of one thing: something is not right with Cloud Strife. His gaze, distant and cold and foreign, unyielding and yet unable to focus, doesn’t remind her at all of the boy she once knew. That Cloud Strife had eyes filled with wonder, with dreams and goals and ambition. His eyes were blue but they burned with a fire that Tifa admired so much; as a young girl, she thought she could spend hours looking at his eyes, that those eyes held the world inside of them. It took her away from the tiny little town she called home.

Now, that fire is extinguished. Behind Cloud’s eyes is nothing but a void, the world once beneath them now consumed entirely by green Mako.

_ But why? How?  _ Cloud surely can change in seven years--but like this?  _ This _ kind of change is not growth; it’s decay.

Tifa doesn’t know why just yet, but she’s scared for Cloud. She’s worried about him.

“Ma’am.” The harsh voice of the station operator snaps Tifa out of her racing thoughts. “Ma’am. Are you responsible for this man?”

_ Am I?  _ Tifa’s not sure. She thinks about how long it’s been since she and Cloud last spoke. Seven years. He’d mistaken it for five earlier, but she remembers, clear as day, his last night in town. The water tower. The stars. Her nerves when she decided to meet him there. After he left, she’d thought about him often; she’d even buy the paper, every Sunday morning, and read it cover to cover with the hope that Cloud’s name would be in it. Nothing ever came of it, though. He never reached out to her. But she didn’t stop thinking about him; no, every once in a while, even all these years later, he still crept back into her thoughts from time to time.

Sometimes it made Tifa angry that she never heard from Cloud after he left the village. There were so many words left unsaid. Moments forgotten.  _ Promises broken _ .

But when she first saw him at the station today, none of those things mattered. And they don’t matter now--what matters to her, in this moment, is that Cloud is safe.

_ Am I responsible for him?  _ Tifa thinks she finally knows the answer.

With a sigh, she finally answers, “Yeah. He’s with me.”

* * *

Tifa slings Cloud’s arm over her shoulders and helps him back to her apartment. His feet drag a little, but he gathers up enough strength to carry himself most of the way, only leaning on Tifa for support. People in the slums don’t often take notice when strangers roll in, even in Cloud’s stupor--they think,  _ It’s just another drunk _ . But they pay attention to Cloud. The uniform gives him away as a SOLDIER; and in the slums, SOLDIERs are synonymous with trouble.

Tifa catches a group of people staring. When she shoots them a dirty look, they quickly turn away. Tifa has a reputation in the slums, too; after five years, she’d been in enough fights to garner a little bit of respect.

Tifa is careful to avoid Seventh Heaven. She’ll explain everything to Barret later--but for now, it’s easier to keep this to herself. Barret, of all people, harbors the strongest distrust of Shinra. Tifa doesn’t know how he’d react if he spotted her with a SOLDIER--even an  _ ex _ -SOLDIER.

Once at the apartment, Tifa helps Cloud to sit upright on the edge of the bed. He collects himself while she reaches for the phone, dialing Seventh Heaven’s landline.

As expected, Jessie answers.

“ _ Tifa! _ ” Jessie’s bubbly voice rings through the receiver. She seems to be in a particularly cheerful mood. “ _ I thought you were topside today! Didn’t expect to hear from you ‘til later. _ ”

“Yeah, about that...” Tifa makes a show of coughing into the phone--though, admittedly, she worries her feigned coughs won’t fly under Jessie’s radar. Tifa has never been the most convincing liar. “I think I came down with something. I feel  _ awful _ .”

“ _ Really? You  _ never  _ feel under the weather. I can’t even  _ remember _ the last time you called in sick. _ ”

“Yeah, I know, can you  _ believe _ it?” Tifa nervously chews the nail on her ring finger in a vain attempt to hide her anxiety. “Today of all days, I end up catching a cold.”

“ _ Do you think it’s that virus going around? _ ” Jessie asks.

“Could be!” Tifa exclaims, though upon hearing her own excitable voice, she lowers it back to a normal volume. “Let Barret know I’ll be out tonight, okay?”

“ _ Will do. Get some rest, okay? We need you in top shape for Avalanche’s next big step. And Barret will wanna fill you in ASAP--so make sure you stop by the bar tomorrow. Okay? _ ”

Tifa thanks Jessie before hanging up. By now, Cloud has come back to his senses. He looks up when Tifa returns the phone to its receiver and says, in a very measured voice, “Sorry about that. I... don’t really know what happened back there.”

Tifa gives Cloud a shy smile. “It’s really no big deal.” She pulls the folding chair out from underneath her desk and takes a seat, facing Cloud. “You have a place to stay while you’re in Midgar?”

Cloud shakes his head. “No, not yet. Thought I’d... figure that all out once I got here.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me, if you want. Just until you find your own place.”

The words escape Tifa’s mouth as if they have a mind of their own. Tifa’s gut tells her that Cloud needs to stay close by. That odd, almost surreal feeling she gets when they speak puts her on edge. Her worry spreads like a fire in her chest. She doesn’t want him to leave--not yet. Not until she figures out how she can help him. And she thinks if she offers him a place to stay, she can buy herself some time.

“R-Really?” For the first time since they met, Cloud’s eyes show something behind them. Surprise? Shock? Tifa doesn’t have time to analyze, because as quickly as it appears it dissipates into nothingness once more. “Uh, I don’t wanna put you out--”

“You wouldn’t,” Tifa assures him. “In the meantime, I can ask around and see if anyone’s got a spare room. I’ve got a pretty good relationship with the landlady here.”

After a moment of thought, Cloud finally nods. “All right. Thanks, Tifa.”

Tifa thinks she sees the faintest hint of a smile form on Cloud’s lips, and almost automatically, she finds herself smiling back at him. Cloud never  _ was  _ one to smile; that much stayed consistent after all this time. But Tifa remembered him almost  _ fondly  _ for that. It made the moments he  _ did  _ smile all the more meaningful.

“I wanna hear about everything,” she says. “Everything that’s happened since you left the village. But first, I think I oughta wash that uniform.” Tifa noticed it at the station—that Cloud’s uniform is covered in dust and dirt from his travels. He must have gone days without stopping to be this unkempt.

Cloud looks down with furrowed brows. “Oh, shit. This is all I have.”

“I might have something for you.”

Tifa walks over to the dresser and rummages through the drawers. Every so often, as a single father, Barret will start getting overwhelmed. Marlene is so young and needs so much attention; compounded by Barret’s involvement in Avalanche, he tends to spread himself far too thin. When Tifa notices his stress, she’ll offer to help him out, so that he has a chance to catch his breath. Maybe in some ways Barret reminds Tifa a little bit of her own dad. For so long, it was just Tifa and her father. She always wonders how it must have been, to lose Tifa’s mother and to continue on without her, raising a little girl all alone. She’s proud of Barret for what he does for Marlene, and that’s why she does her best to help.

This week, Barret fell behind on his and Marlene’s laundry. Tifa had folded it all and planned on dropping it off tonight—but a change of plans bought her some more time. She dug out a plain shirt and pair of pants belonging to Barret and handed them to Cloud.

“These might be a little big on you,” Tifa warns.

“A  _ little _ ?” Cloud holds the shirt out in front of him. In seven years, Cloud has bulked up, getting a little bit taller, building muscle mass—most likely from his SOLDIER training. But even with a taller stature and broader shoulders, Cloud has nothing on Barret. The shirt swallows him up. “I’ll be swimming in this thing.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” remarks Tifa with a small smirk, before turning her attention back to the drawers.

“Whose  _ is _ this anyway?” Cloud asks, his voice lowered to a whisper. 

“Why do you ask?” Tifa responds absent-mindedly.

When she turns to Cloud after his long silence, he’s glancing back and forth from the shirt, to Tifa, then back to the shirt. With a tinge of negative feeling that Tifa can’t quite pinpoint, Cloud says, “Nevermind. Doesn’t matter.”

“If you want,” Tifa tells him, “you can get changed in the bathroom over there.”

Cloud nods and makes his way across the room. Once he’s inside, door shut and locked, Tifa finally gets a closer look at his sword. He leaned it against the wall when he entered the room, so now it stands completely upright; like this, it’s almost as tall as  _ Tifa _ . Tifa taps it with her knuckle every so lightly, and listens closely to the sound it makes. It’s  _ solid _ , made of some sort of dense metal. Despite the layers of grime that have settled on the blade, there don’t seem to be any knicks or scrapes on it; every inch of the sword is pristine, as if it were almost brand new.  _ Odd that he’d buy a new sword _ , thinks Tifa,  _ when he’s moving to a new city.  _ Near the hilt, two identical pieces of magic materia sit nestled into perfectly-sized slots.

  
Tifa squints when she looks the blade up and down.  _ Why do I feel like I’ve seen something like this before? _


	3. a lot of catching up to do

* * *

Stargazer Heights is a tiny block of apartments on the east side of Sector 7 that Tifa calls home. For a few months after she first arrived in Midgar, Tifa lived exclusively on the streets, huddled near train stations at night to keep safe, taking every possible odd job she could find to scrounge up enough money to afford a  _ real  _ place. Zangan had helped her as much as he could--her medical bills had put her in debt, not that she could remember much from her hospital visit--but eventually she had to fend for herself. And at fifteen, fending for herself was a daunting task.

But Tifa held on to  _ something _ . She had to hold on. She was the only one left who remembered them--the village, her friends, her neighbors, her  _ father _ . If she didn’t survive, who would tell the story? Who would ever know what happened?

Certainly not the public--Shinra was quick to deal with that. Tifa starved in those early days, but she always managed to buy the paper. She’d sit and read it at the station, cover to cover, just to find one  _ single _ word about Nibelheim. About her home. About Sephiroth. Sephiroth appeared on the front page for weeks: “War Hero dies in freak accident”. No location, no date, no details. But Nibelheim only got a footnote; something about a reactor malfunction that Shinra had under control, nothing that the public should worry about.

Tifa’s entire life was erased from history.

And so, Tifa didn’t allow herself to get low. She  _ doesn’t  _ allow herself to get low. She survived before, and she survives now. Not long after she’d arrived in Midgar and she met Barret, a new resident himself, and his little baby Marlene. He’d bought the abandoned warehouse on the west side of Sector 7 and needed help moving construction supplies. Tifa was no stranger to heavy lifting, and the two began to develop a friendship. Eventually, Tifa suggested opening a bar--and the rest of the story wrote itself.

Shortly after, Tifa rented a room at Stargazer heights, owned by Marle. Marle and Tifa have grown close over the years; whenever she gets exhausted at work, or tired of Avalanche’s antics, she goes to Marle for advice. Marle’s older and she’s lived in Sector 7 for a long time, and she knows everything about living in the slums. She never turns Tifa away from her door, even in the dead of night.

Tifa feels a little guilty that she hasn’t told Marle about her overnight guest--but now’s not the time. There’s a lot that Tifa needs to figure out  _ first _ .

* * *

Tifa doesn’t tell Cloud her story--at least, not  _ yet _ . She wants to hear  _ his _ . She wants to know what he’s been through, what he was doing all these long years. Where he’d gone.

Why he doesn’t seem like  _ himself _ .

Tifa and Cloud sit across from each other in the dimly-lit Stargazer Heights laundry room. Marle keeps three washing machines and three dryers in two neat lines in the basement of the apartment building. Cloud sits on a chair that’s up against the wall--now clad in a white t-shirt that’s  _ much  _ too big for him and even baggier pants--while Tifa sits atop a washing machine. They talk over the hum of the machines whirring around them.

“So did you end up fighting in the war?” asks Tifa. When Cloud looks down at his hands, she quickly adds, “Uh, don’t worry if it’s a sore subject--forget I asked--”

“No, it’s fine,” says Cloud, looking back up at her. “I… did go to Wutai. Just once.”

“That all?”

Cloud nods. “By the time I made it into SOLDIER, the war was almost over.”

“So what’d ya’ do after that?” asks Tifa, swinging her legs back and forth as they dangle from the ledge.

Cloud sighs. “Boring shit, really. They didn’t have enough for us to do as SOLDIERs, so we went around silencing Shinra defectors, mostly.”

Tifa purses her lips. “That’s really all you did?”

“If I had more to tell you, I  _ would _ ,” says Cloud.

“Why’d you quit?” Tifa leans on her elbows, eyes looking intently into Cloud’s. Initially, he looks away from her, unable or unwilling to hold her gaze. “Sounds like an easy gig-- _ right _ ?”

“Yeah, that was the problem,” says Cloud. “No risk, no reward. Couldn’t be a hero that way.”

Tifa thinks back on that night under the stars. Cloud’s words echo in her head.  _ I’m gonna be a SOLDIER. The best of the best--like Sephiroth _ . It seemed like such an impossible dream back then, but Tifa always thought that, if anyone could do it, it would be Cloud. The boy that held the world in his sea-blue eyes.

Tifa thinks to herself,  _ Maybe it’s better he didn’t end up like Sephiroth. Even before the fire, I never even  _ liked  _ the guy. _

But saying this to Cloud would only add insult to injury. Instead, she says, “I’m sure you were  _ someone’s  _ hero.”

When she says this, Cloud finally looks up from his clasped hands and looks directly into Tifa’s eyes. He has the power to hold her gaze, to freeze her in her place, though he seems to not even realize it. Tifa finally has a chance to study his eyes--intensely blue, with a faint green glow from beneath. Even in this dimly lit space, his eyes seem to light up like blue flame. There’s something endlessly captivating about them--haunting, even--and they trap Tifa into their grip, shackling her to him.

Tifa hates to say it, but she misses his old blue eyes.

But this held gaze doesn’t last nearly as long as it feels. Cloud’s eyes eventually drop back down to his hands--now, clenched into two separate fists on his lap. “Yeah. Maybe.” After a long pause, he looks back up at Tifa, though not with that same wistful look as before, and says, “I’ve said enough about me. What about you?”

“ _ Me _ ?” Tifa asks.

“Yeah. You. Who else?”

Tifa taps her fingers against the metal washing machine beneath her. “After I left Nibelheim, I came to Sector 7. I eventually got a job bartending from my friend Barret.”

“Barret, huh?” asks Cloud. “Do I get to meet this  _ Barret _ ?”

“Someday soon,” Tifa says. “He’s a really nice guy.” She takes a deep breath, purses her lips, and says, “You ever heard about Avalanche?”

“ _ Avalanche _ ?” Cloud rests one hand on his pensive face. “Can’t say I have.”

Tifa furrows her brows, but just for a second. A thought pops into her head.  _ Funny that he went to Wutai but doesn’t know about Avalanche.  _ Barret talked enough about it for Tifa to know; Shinra had tried to snuff Avalanche out in Wutai, at the tail end of the war. That’s where Avalanche had set up their base of operations. In fact, Avalanche didn’t start gaining traction in Midgar until  _ after  _ the war was over.

But she doesn’t want to question Cloud. Maybe that just isn’t his area of expertise.

“Uh, it’s a group,” Tifa says, shaking her head. “How should I put this?... Avalanche doesn’t like Shinra very much.”

“Who  _ does _ ?” Cloud responds, leaning back in his chair.

“They want to protect the Planet,” Tifa explains, “and to do that, they have to take down Shinra. Shinra’s been labeling them as  _ eco-terrorists _ in the news...”

Cloud squints his eyes at Tifa, perhaps unable to discern her expression. She hides her face a little from him. “What about Avalanche?  _ You _ involved?”

“Sort of,” Tifa responds. “More like… I help them out from time to time.”

“Help  _ how _ ?” asks Cloud. Now he’s sitting upright in his seat, listening attentively. A look of displeasure washes across his face.

“Barret--he owns the bar,” explains Tifa, flustered. “Or, his name’s on the paperwork. He’s a part of them. Of Avalanche. And so every now and then, I overhear things. And I guess sometimes I cover for them.”

Cloud looks Tifa up and down, that intense gaze returning, trapping Tifa yet again. He scowls. “You shouldn’t be involved in a group like that. You’re putting yourself in danger.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.”

Cloud leans on his elbows, moving his eyes to the floor. “Guess I can’t blame you, though. Shinra… well, fuck Shinra. They don’t give a damn about anything.  _ I’d  _ probably have joined Avalanche, too, if I lived in the slums.”

Tifa nods. Her hands tightly grip the edge of the machine, turning her knuckles white beneath her gloves. “Yeah. I… Shinra just makes me so  _ mad _ ...” Tifa catches herself getting overwhelmed with this. This  _ anger _ . It washes over Tifa in waves, pulling her under, drowning her. But she always catches herself before that fire in her heart brings tears to her eyes. She composes herself and continues. “Avalanche does good for the Planet, too. I’m… I’m glad I met them.”

Cloud’s eyes are trained on her hands, which have relaxed their grip. When he looks up at Tifa, she swears that he appears gentler, for just a moment in time. That harsh, constricting gaze he holds her in, replaced with softness that is uncharacteristic of him. That permanent scowl gone, tight jaw loosened, eyebrows turned downward. He says, “Tifa...” and Tifa looks at him, catching this expression only briefly. But once she does, he turns away and reverts to his normal self. The scowl returns, and the eyes glow severely, more now than before. “I trust you to handle yourself out there. You’re pretty strong.”

Tifa smiles. “Thanks.”

The rest of the time spent in that basement room is punctuated by small conversations, cheeky comments (all from Cloud), and the occasional lull back into silence. But even in these silent moments, Tifa looks at Cloud and feels a fullness in her chest. She worries for him-- _ God _ , does she worry for him--but there’s something else in her heart. Something warm. Something familiar. She never admitted it before, but now she can’t deny it: she missed Cloud Strife. That starving girl who read the paper wouldn’t just look for  _ Nibelheim _ \--she’d look for  _ Cloud Strife _ , hoping to catch even a glimpse of his name somewhere. She remembers even a few times where, with a heaviness in her chest that weighed her down like bricks tied to her ankle, she looked to the obituaries, and prayed softly not to find him there.

But now, he’s back. And she missed him while he was gone.

She’s happy to have him back.

* * *

“I  _ promise  _ you, we’ll find you something better in the morning.”

Tifa pulls out a sleeping bag from her small closet and rolls it out on the floor, a few feet away from her bed. She insisted to Cloud when they returned to the apartment that  _ she  _ be the one sleeping on the floor--but Cloud wouldn’t have it. “ _ You’re  _ the one doing  _ me  _ the favor, here,” he reminded her sternly. “What kind of guest would I be making you sleep on the floor?” Tifa pleaded with him once more, but that seemed to be the end of the discussion.

Now, setting up Cloud’s accommodations, she feels a tinge of guilt. He’s gone through a lot--though Tifa can’t know  _ exactly _ \--and she wants him to sleep in a real bed. But the sleeping bag will  _ have  _ to do for the night. In the morning, she can find him something better.

“ _ God _ , I’m exhausted,” Cloud says, slipping into the sleeping bag.

“Me, too.” Tifa found her way to her bed and covered herself with her thick sheets. Tifa turns so her back faces Cloud and keeps her eyes trained on the wall. She doesn’t want Cloud to notice her sheepishness--Tifa’s always been a private person, and normally she would never share her room like this. But this is different--this is  _ Cloud _ . So she fights her shyness and her nerves. Even though thinking about how close he’s sleeping paints her face in a rosy hue.

“Hey, Tifa?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks again,” Cloud says, quietly. “For everything.”

Tifa laughs lightly. “You don’t have to thank me.”

Tifa doesn’t hear if Cloud responds to her. She’s already drifted off into a deep sleep.

* * *

_ Summers in Nibelheim were particularly hot and brutal--especially after Shinra built the reactor at the top of Mt. Nibel. The Mako hung over the town in a thin blanket, trapping in heat, making the air sweltering and unbearable. But Tifa didn’t care. Not when she was a kid, and she had the whole summer to play, to run barefoot through the fields just beyond the town gate, to climb the water tower and watch those red and orange summer sunsets. _

_ Next door lived Cloud Strife. This was before he’d grown his hair out long--actually, it looked a lot like it does now. Cut to just above the shoulders, styled in spikes. Tifa and Cloud were friends.  _ She _ considered him to be her friend, at least. His bedroom window looked into hers, and they’d often talk across the gap. It would always be short, superficial conversations, “How are you?” or “What did you do today?” But Tifa looked forward to them. She liked talking to Cloud, even if just for a few minutes before she’d fall asleep. _

_ But even though Cloud would talk with Tifa each night, Cloud never played with Tifa and her friends--even when they’d chase each other around in the town plaza, making enough noise for the old shopkeeper to yell at them, Cloud never asked to join. Tifa always figured he had better things to do. _

_ She always wished he would ask, though. _

_ One day--particularly brutally hot, even for summer--the boys suggested playing a game they called “Save the Princess”. One team, dubbed “Wutai”, would “capture” Tifa; the other team, the SOLDIERs, would have to defeat Wutai in order to rescue her. Tifa always thought this was a silly game--and  _ boring _. She always got stuck waiting for the boys to finish fighting; and, even when they finished, all she’d get to do was crown the winners as her “heroes”. Whenever the boys suggested this game, Tifa protested. But her alternatives were  _ always  _ vetoed. _

_ This time, the boys had a problem: they didn’t have a third SOLDIER, giving Wutai an unfair advantage. _

_ As they argued about what to do, Tifa peered across the square. Her eyes landed on Cloud, who sat by himself on a bench, eyes to the ground, his own wooden sword resting against the wrought iron armrest. He didn’t notice her looking at him, but watching him there, always a loner, Tifa came up with an idea. _

_ “Let’s ask Cloud to play,” Tifa told the group of boys. _

_ “No way!” one boy exclaimed. “Not Strife. He’s a jerk.” _

_ “You wanna play Save the Princess--don’t you?” Tifa responded. And without hearing the other boys’ answers, she skipped off to the other side of the square. _

_ When Cloud heard footsteps approaching him, he looked up and met eyes with Tifa. In the summer sun, his eyes appeared even deeper. When she looked at them, Tifa couldn’t help but smile. _

_ “Tifa,” Cloud said, as if he were in awe that she’d approach him out of the blue. “What’s up?” _

_ “Do you wanna play a game with us?” asked Tifa. “We need one more person.” _

_ “How do you play?” Cloud asked her in reply, tapping his foot on the pavement rapidly. _

_ Tifa grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. He barely had enough time to grab his wooden sword and sling it on his back. “It’s easy!” she shouted to him. “I’m the princess. You’re a SOLDIER. All you gotta do is beat Wutai and rescue me--got it? Then you’ll be my hero.” _

_ “How do I rescue you?” he replied, eyes wide and starry. _

_ This time, one of the boys chimed in--with an annoyed tone. “You gotta bring Tifa to the old mansion.” _

_ Cloud nodded. Tifa took her place by the base of the water tower. She caught Cloud’s eyes with her own and waved to him, shouting, “You got this, Cloud!” and eliciting a rare, shy smile from the little blond-haired boy next door. _

_ One of the Wutai boys yelled, and they all started fighting. Wooden swords clashing against wooden swords. Shouting over each other, yelling at each other, saying words that Tifa’s dad told her were “unladylike”. Tifa fell to a seated position and watched from the sidelines, arms crossed on her knees. Eventually her eyes travelled upward, bored of the fight, to watch the blue sky, and to follow the fluffy white clouds as they drifted aimlessly above her. _

_ But she didn’t have time to daydream. She felt a tap on her arm, bringing her back to reality. Standing above her was Cloud, hand outstretched to meet hers, all while the other boys were fighting just a few feet from them. _

_ “Cloud?” Tifa asked. “What are you doing?” _

_ Cloud cocked his head, before simply answering, “Rescuing you, of course.” _

_ Tifa gave him her hand and he pulled her to her feet. Hand in hand, Cloud pulled Tifa along behind him, making his way quickly to the mansion at the edge of town. It was only then that the other boys noticed them running, one calling out, “Hey, what the hell, Strife?” and another complaining, “That’s against the rules!” _

_ Tifa barely had a chance to catch her breath. She shouted to Cloud, “What about the fight?” _

_ “Heroes always rescue the princess first,” Cloud said to her. “ _ Then _ they can deal with the bad guys.” _

_ A red flush washed over Tifa’s face. She looked back to see the other boys right behind them in an angry mob. But she and Cloud were faster, and they reached the mansion first. It’s only after they arrived there that Cloud finally lets go of Tifa’s hand. _

_ The biggest of the group of boys pushed his way to the front. He yelled in Cloud’s face, “Why’d you have to go ruin our game, Strife?” while Cloud stood his ground, scowling back at the boy with an unwavering glare. _

_ Tifa stepped between them. “What are you talking about? Cloud didn’t break any rules!” _

_ “Yeah, he did!” another boy shouted from behind. “He cheated!” _

_ “You guys are being mean!” Tifa said. “Cloud won fair and square!” _

_ “Come on, Tifa, don’t defend him!” _

_ “That’s why we don’t invite him to play with us!” _

_ The boys’ shouts grew louder and more aggressive with each taunt. Tifa was unable to yell over them, drowned out by their petty arguing. She turned to Cloud and watched his face. At first, he appeared angry. But Tifa saw his expression morph, for the tiniest fraction of a moment, into one that hurt her heart. In that second, he looked sad. He looked as if he could break down. He looked shattered. _

_ But he didn’t ever express it, if he was sad. Because the moment Cloud began to feel sad, he replaced it with anger. He pushed the taller boy out of his face, deepening his scowl, and shouted through gritted teeth, “Fine by me. This game is stupid anyway.” _

_ Cloud stormed past the group of boys, stomping off to the other side of the square. Tifa ran toward him, shouting after him, “Cloud, wait!”, but didn’t follow him. She stopped at the fence that lined the perimeter of the old mansion and just watched him walk away, shoulders tense with anger, hands balled into fists. Behind her, the other boys were coming up with a new plan, a new way to play the game. But Tifa barely listened to them. She just kept her eyes on Cloud until the boy disappeared in the distance, most likely finding refuge somewhere in the fields just outside of town. _

_ That was the first time any boy thought to save Tifa first. It was the  _ only  _ time any boy thought to save Tifa first. And eventually, Tifa refused to play that game ever again. _

* * *

Tifa lifts her heavy eyelids and finds herself transported back to her tiny apartment, staring at the piano concerto poster hung on her concrete walls by tape. In a state of stupor, of half-sleep, Tifa groggily rolled to the other side and looked across the room with bleary eyes.

The clock on her bedside table reads 3:35 a.m. She sighs deeply.  _ I really must have needed some sleep _ .

Tifa thinks it’s a little odd, her dreaming of such a memory. Most of her Nibelheim dreams are tinged in bright red;  _ some  _ are dusted in blue and green. But this one was colored golden--the color of the many summers she spent under that beautiful mountain sky.

_ And Cloud _ ? Tifa must have had Cloud on her mind when she fell asleep. That’s not such a surprise, though. Usually, Cloud is absent from her Nibelheim dreams, only appearing when she sees that gorgeous star-studded sky above her head. He’s sitting next to her on the edge of the water tower, as he should be. But this was a different memory; it must be because they’ve reunited after so many years.

She turns her gaze to the floor, where Cloud should be, to find an empty sleeping bag.

_ Wait… empty? _

_ Where’s Cloud? _

Tifa jumps from her bed and knocks frantically on the bathroom door, only to get no response. When she throws the door open, the room is empty. The sound of wind whirring against the walls draws her attention to the front door, which is slightly ajar, and every so often moves with the breeze and knocks against the doorframe with a metal bang.

Cloud’s sword, too, is missing from its place on the wall.

_ Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. _

Tifa doesn’t have time to think. She doesn’t even bother changing out of her pajamas. She throws on a coat and runs outside--not even bothering to lock the door behind her.

  
  



	4. the sleepwalker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: drug/addiction mention

* * *

The streets of Sector 7 are not quite  _ empty  _ at three o’clock in the morning, but they surely are much more quiet. Tifa sees people loitering outside the item shop, and she runs over to them in a panic, clutching her coat closed around her pajamas so as to not attract more unwanted attention to herself.

“Have any of you seen a blond guy?” Tifa waves her hand above her, around Cloud’s approximate height. “This tall. Blond hair. Big sword. Ring any bells?”

The group shakes their heads. Tifa sighs deeply and continues forward, making her way toward the Sector 7 station. As she walks, her mind races, and she wonders where Cloud could have run off to.  _ In his state, he could put himself in danger. He could put others in danger…  _ Tifa tries her best not to dwell on the endless horrible possibilities and focuses just on finding Cloud, but she can’t help herself.

_ What if he ran into monsters in the junkyard? _

_ What if he made it all the way to Sector 2? I’ll never catch up to him… _

_ What if he hurts someone? _

_ What if… _

Tifa stops dead in her tracks. Standing at the nearly-deserted Sector 7 station platform, staring into the distance in an obvious daze, is Cloud. He’s illuminated by a harsh fluorescent street lamp. Dressed in Barret’s baggy clothes, with his gigantic sword slung on his back. Unable to keep his balance and swaying a little bit, as if he were still asleep and somehow standing on his own.

“Cloud!” Tifa rushes to him, placing herself between him and the oncoming train. She notices some of the late-night commuters turn their heads to them, and she shoots them a dirty look until they go back to their periodicals or train their eyes to the floor instead. Tifa gently, cautiously, wraps her hands around Cloud’s broad shoulders and shakes him a little. “Cloud? Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” His eyes don’t seem to focus on her but on something past her. When she shakes his shoulders, he almost tips over, and she has to hold him up to prevent him from falling onto the hard pavement.

“What are you doing out here?” Tifa asks. She stares intently into his eyes, searching for anything behind them and only finding nothingness. “Cloud, are you… should I call…?”

Cloud shakes his head. “Need to… get to sector 5… ”

“Sector 5?” Tifa’s eyebrows come together in confusion. She cocks her head, if only to get a closer look at Cloud’s blank, expressionless face. “What’s in Sector 5?”

“Told someone… I’d… meet them there… ”

“ _ Meet  _ someone?  _ Now _ ?”

Slowly but surely, Cloud starts coming to. The fog lifts from behind his Mako eyes, removing the dullness, bringing him back to reality from that dreamy place. He notices Tifa in front of him now but can only stare with heavy lids, managing to finally whisper one, confused, “ _ Tifa _ ?” He looks around lazily, then frantically, perhaps realizing only  _ now _ what his surroundings are, that he isn’t asleep in Tifa’s apartment.

“Cloud...” Tifa loosens her grip on Cloud’s shoulders but doesn’t let go. She looks down at their feet, then back up at his bright eyes. “Cloud, we’ll go to Sector 5 tomorrow. Okay? I’ll take you myself.”

Cloud nods, eyelids getting heavier and heavier. “Okay.”

“Come on.” Tifa offers her shoulder for him to lean on, and he accepts it. “Let’s go back to the apartment.”

The whole way back to Stargazer Heights, Cloud drags his feet again. They backtrack through the dimly lit Sector 7 alleys, underneath flickering street lamps and the gigantic plate sun lamps that shine on the slums like big spotlights. No protection, no privacy. Tifa feels particularly exposed  _ now _ , carrying Cloud back to the apartment. Maybe it’s because, for the first time in a long time, her walls are down. She’s  _ vulnerable _ . And not in the way that she’d like to be--not in honesty, in trust, in openness. Instead, she’s  _ disarmed _ , thrust into circumstances that she’s unprepared for.

She’d wished so many times to meet Cloud Strife again someday. But this was  _ not _ what she had in mind.

At the apartment, Tifa puts Cloud back to bed. She stands frozen at her bedside for a long time, debating on whether to let herself fall asleep once again.  _ What if he wakes up again? What if next time, you don’t find him? What if… what if…. _

So Tifa takes her place with her back against the front door, slides down the wall and onto the floor, and sleeps  _ there _ instead.

* * *

When Tifa wakes up, she’s back in her own bed. She immediately jumps up and looks around the room hurriedly for Cloud. It’s morning now--the sun shines through the curtains and blankets the room in soft reds and oranges. The trains will be running at full capacity now. If Cloud’s run off, he might be gone for good.

Tifa’s eyes dart to the sleeping bag.  _ Empty _ .

She hurries to the coat rack and throws on her coat, fumbling with the tie at her waist. She’s about to sprint out of the apartment  _ once more  _ when, this time, she stops when she hears a rustling coming from the other side of the bathroom door.

Cloud emerges and locks eyes with Tifa. He meets her wide, exasperated eyes with a confused look, brows pressed together, lids squinted. “Tifa? You okay?”

Tifa lets out a dramatic sigh and shuts the front door behind her. She bends over, hands on her knees, and tries to catch her breath. When she finally finds her words, she says, “How did… I was…?” while pointing from the stone flooring to her bed on the other side of the room. “I was right…  _ here _ … ”

“You fell asleep on the floor,” said Cloud. “When I woke up, I figured I’d put you back in bed.” Tifa notices that look--the one from the laundry room, the softer one--emerge briefly as Cloud fumbles over his words. “Was that…  _ no good _ ?”

A faint red flush washes over Tifa’s cheeks.  _ God, he found me asleep on the floor. I must have looked like an idiot.  _ She purses her lips.  _ No, no. You just wanted to make sure he didn’t run off again. It was worth looking stupid. _

“It’s okay,” Tifa assures him, finally straightening her posture. “ _ Thanks _ , actually. The floor was… not very comfy.”

“Yeah. Didn’t look like it was.”

Tifa takes a moment to fully regain her composure.  _ In four… hold seven… out eight _ . Cloud is back. Cloud is  _ normal _ \--well, the  _ new  _ normal, at least. Everything is how it should be.

And yet, Tifa can’t help but think,  _ Something weird was going on last night.  _ She remembers spotting Cloud at the station, the listlessness of his eyes, the way they couldn’t focus on anything, not even  _ Tifa  _ who stood right in front of him and shook him until a glimmer of consciousness returned. She remembers that hoarse voice, strained, almost  _ injured  _ in the way it insisted. “ _ Need to… get to Sector 5... _ ” At the time, Tifa didn’t bother to ask the questions she  _ should  _ have--even now, she worries about the answers she’ll get.

But she knows she  _ must  _ ask them. She’s procrastinated long enough. “Cloud,” she says breathlessly, “do you remember anything from last night?”

“Last night?” Cloud’s eyebrows come together in the middle, his eyes moving sharply downwards in deep thought. “What do you mean?”

“Last night, you told me that you needed to see someone in Sector 5,” Tifa explains in one quick sentence, “and I told you that I’d take you in the morning. Do you remember that?”

“ _ Sector 5 _ ?” Cloud shakes his head. “I don’t know anyone in Sector 5.”

Tifa inhales quickly. In her mind, her thoughts echo and toy with her.  _ Don’t push him, he’ll just run off--no, on second thought, you  _ should  _ push him. Demand answers. Wait, no, maybe that’s too harsh…  _ In Tifa’s mind, there’s no right answer. But she has to say  _ something _ \--the silence begins to suffocate her and make her fully aware of herself, of Cloud, of the tiny space between them, of the claustrophobia she feels in this tiny apartment. Of something  _ dark  _ that sits behind those Mako eyes and snuffs out the ocean blue beneath.

“It seemed really important,” Tifa finally says, “that you go right away.”

Cloud simply shrugs. “Maybe I was just sleepwalking.”

_ Sleepwalking _ .

Tifa doesn’t feel right accepting this. It doesn’t  _ really  _ feel like the truth. But what can she say to the contrary? She thought it herself when she found him standing on the platform--he looked dazed, his mind foggy, his eyes glassed over so much that Tifa could see her reflection in them. He talked as if he were in another world that he couldn’t escape. Perhaps Cloud  _ did  _ just sleepwalk, and his dreams brought him there, to the station, to see someone he’d made up. Perhaps there’s nothing more to it than that, and Tifa worried for nothing.

_ But the urgency of his voice.  _ Tifa thinks that  _ couldn’t  _ have come from a dream, that it had to come from someplace deeper. Something important drew Cloud to Sector 5 last night.

_ No, Tifa. Stop. You’re overreacting. Why would Cloud lie to you? _ She finally sighs deeply, feigns a laugh, and says, “Some wild adventure you went on, then.”

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” replies Cloud, locking her in his gaze.

Tifa shakes her head. “You didn’t. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

That morning, as Tifa gets ready for work, she sneaks quick glances at Cloud. He’s donned his SOLDIER uniform--cleaned and restored to its original navy blue color--and polishes his sword at Tifa’s desk. When he looks up from his work, Tifa quickly turns her eyes back around so he doesn’t notice her staring. She brushes through her hair repeatedly, trying to look busy, while replaying the events of last night in her head.

She snaps out of her daydream when Cloud calls her name.

“Tifa. Got a question for you.”

Tifa’s eyes move a little north of her reflection in the mirror to see Cloud standing a good distance behind her. She spins around quickly and backs up instinctually, her body against the porcelain sick. Cloud’s looking at her with such intensity that she can hardly breathe.

“Sure,” she says, nodding hurriedly. “What’s up?”

He opens his mouth to say something, then shut it. Cocking his head just a little, he asks, “Are… you okay?”

Tifa notices only now that her hands are bracing the edge of the sink, as if she were on edge. And she  _ is _ on guard--but she doesn’t say this to Cloud. How could she?  _ I’m a little freaked out by what happened last night.  _ Maybe he’d understand, but where would it go from there? Cloud’s too much of a gentleman; if he knows he makes Tifa uncomfortable, he’ll leave.

And Tifa just  _ knows _ , in her gut, that Cloud can’t be alone. Not now.

So she loosens her grip, straightens her skirt on her legs, and steps a little bit closer--showing him that she isn’t nervous around him, or at least trying to. “Sorry,” she says, smiling softly. “I’m just not used to sharing my apartment with someone.”

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk about,” says Cloud. “I wanna…  _ work  _ around here. Pay you back for everything.”

“Cloud… ” Tifa clasps her hands together in front of her. “That’s really not necessary--”

“I know, I know,” he says, waving his hand in front of his face in a teasing way. “You’d do it anyway. That’s the way you’ve always been.” Cloud awkwardly shifts from one foot to another, crossing his arms over his chest. “But  _ I’d _ feel bad. Let me pay part of the rent, at least. Deal?”

Tifa studies his face when he finally looks back up at her. For the first time, Tifa finally puts her finger on it--on what changes about his eyes sometimes when he speaks to her. It’s like that synthetic green Mako glow fades, just a little, and the blue comes out stronger than before. Tifa doubts that they  _ really  _ change, that her eyes are just playing tricks on her, that maybe the softness in Cloud’s usually harsh face is the  _ real  _ culprit. But still, Tifa notes the change, the return of a Cloud that makes Tifa feel the sun in her chest and the stars in her eyes.

_ This  _ Cloud makes Tifa feel safe. 

Her shoulders droop again, losing all the tension that built up there. “I guess I can’t convince you otherwise, huh?”

Tifa goes to the desk, grabs a small piece of paper, and writes down a name and address in curly, whimsical handwriting--the kind where each letter is connected to the next. She folds it over once and hands it to Cloud. “Here. That’s Wymer’s address. He collects the requests for all the mercs in town. I’m  _ sure  _ he’ll have a big job for an ex-SOLDIER like you.”

Cloud gingerly takes the piece of paper from Tifa’s hands. “Wymer. Got it.”

“I can walk you there before work” Tifa suggests, “if you want.”

“No, I got it,” Cloud says, sticking the paper in his pocket. “You go to work. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. SOLDIER, remember?”

Tifa nods. “Best in the business, right?”

“Right.”

Tifa holds his gaze for just a moment, commits those dark blue eyes to memory because she knows she might not see them for a while. There’s a part of her that’s scared; she worries that Cloud from Nibelheim is long gone, replaced with Cloud the SOLDIER. But then, these little moments remind her that Cloud hasn’t  _ completely  _ changed. She can’t always fight the doubts about Cloud. He showed up only a day ago, but so much has happened to them since then. So much has felt  _ wrong _ about Cloud; but the moments that feel  _ right _ , to Tifa at least, matter more.

Tifa grabs her things and heads for the door. “I work late tonight, so don’t wait up, okay? But if you want, I’ll bring home some food from the bar. We’ll have dinner.”

“That’d be great. Thanks.”

She leaves, hesitating only a minute, and heads for the bar. The whole way there, she pushes away her nervous thoughts. She thinks,  _ I’ll have to trust Cloud  _ sometime  _ if this is ever gonna work. I have to give him a chance.  _

And she thinks that, maybe, she’ll be pleasantly surprised.

* * *

Even for a Sunday, the bar is packed with people. Outside, it’s dark, save for the bright white glow beaming down on the sector from the plate suns. Underneath the hum of conversations and the soft music playing from the jukebox, Barret speaks in hushed voices to Biggs, Wedge, Jessie, and Tifa. Occasionally, he’ll sneak a quick glance behind him, at the door--as if he’s watching for someone eavesdropping.

“Alright, here’s the deal,” Barret says, making sure to lock eyes with each person sitting around him. “We got one shot at this operation-- _ one shot  _ to make it all count. Can’t afford mistakes now-- _ this  _ is where we make our mark.”

Jessie, with a cocky smirk and a flip of her long, brown ponytail, adds, “I’ve designed a bomb that’ll  _ really  _ send a message--if you guys get what I mean. Shinra won’t know what hit ‘em.”

Stocky, chubby-faced Wedge continues, saying, “I’ve got my ammo guy all lined up--he’ll do anything if it’s Shinra’s ass we’re goin’ after.”

And then, there’s Biggs--a lean guy, scruffy in his appearance. He leans over the counter to get a good look at Barret from behind Jessie’s head and replies, “It’s gonna be tough, what we’re up against. We gotta make sure we’re prepared to do this. Not just with bombs and guns--with  _ attitude _ , too.”

“Biggs’s right,” says Barret, nodding. “We gotta  _ want  _ it. We gotta  _ really wanna  _ stick it to ‘em. Sector 7’s been abandoned by those hotshots at Avalanche HQ--they can’t see the  _ bigger picture. _ But  _ we  _ can. And we know that nothing’s gonna change without  _ action _ . Am I right?”

Biggs nods. “The Planet’s what’s important now. Everything else is secondary.”

Tifa tenses up at these words.  _ Everything else is secondary _ . Tifa doesn’t think so--she may feign it, sometimes, or convince herself that she believes it. But it’s hard to say that when she thinks of the people of the slums--the ones who rely on Mako the most, the ones who will suffer. She thinks of little girls like Marlene, walking home from school, caught in the dark when the lights go off. Or restaurants, like Seventh Heaven, forced to shut their doors, without water or electricity to run the business.

And then, suddenly, she sees red.  _ Shinra…  _ It’s  _ them _ . They’ve done this; they’ve hooked the people on a drug they can’t afford to lose. They hold this power, the  _ energy _ . A supply that everyone needs and yet only the very few have a hold of. And they dangle it over the heads of the little folk, as if to say, “ _ Stay in line, or we’ll cut your supply. _ ” Withdrawal would set in fast, leaving the people of the slums to rot away, succumbing to their addiction.

And the  _ Planet _ suffers the most. The Planet is the vein opened, bled dry. They use Her bounty to control  _ everything _ .

Tifa finds herself saying in a harsh whisper, hands clenched in tight fists on the counter. “You’re right. The  _ Planet _ comes first.“

“ _ Wow _ , Tifa’s really fired up all the sudden!” Jessie shouts, downing the rest of her cocktail. “What changed?”

“Nothin’ changed!” says Barret. “Tifa’s always believed in  _ Avalanche _ ! Ain’t that right, Tifa?”

Tifa, still halfway in a daze, shoots her eyes toward Barret. She smiles through her damaged thoughts and says, “Right. Absolutely.”

“Listen, Tifa,” Barret says slowly, measuredly, unlike his normal enthusiastic self. “What we’re plannin’ here… it’s dangerous shit. We can’t thank you for everything you’ve done for Avalanche--I mean, you covered our asses more than I can  _ count _ \--but we moved on from all that. We aren’t just small time anymore; we’re hittin’ Shinra where is  _ hurts _ .” Barret grips his drink in his hands tightly, swishing the whiskey around and watching it, in deep thought. “From this moment on, you gotta  _ commit _ . This is it, Tifa. Either you’re in all the way, or you’re out. No hard feelings.”

Biggs, Wedge, Jessie--their eyes are trained on Tifa, boring holes in her skull with their intensity. They’d  _ committed  _ long ago. They’ve all seen the worst of the slums, just like Tifa. They’d watched the flowers die, the winters grow harsher, the air fill with smog and dust. The rot and decay that Shinra left in its wake. For them, that was enough to take the plunge.

But Tifa’s heart is pulled two ways--in one direction by revenge and hatred, in the other by her own conscience begging her to be  _ better  _ than them, not to fall into this trap.

“Give me a day to think about it,” is all Tifa tells them.

Barret retires upstairs to his apartment on the second floor, while Biggs and Wedge and Jessie all walk home, singing unintelligible songs to each other the whole way. As Tifa cleans the bar, she feels as though she’s in a trance; it’s not her mind controlling her body’s movements but an outside force pulling the strings, going through the motions. In a brief moment, she finds herself wondering if she, like Cloud, is sleepwalking, unable to wake herself up from a nightmare of indecision that tears her heart in two.

She hurries to finish her work so that she can head home, where Cloud must be waiting.


	5. an evening together

* * *

Tifa hurries back to Stargazer heights, two boxes of leftovers in her arms. She’s much later than she’d hoped--the drunks at the bar spilled enough beer to create a puddle underneath one of the tables, and she’d crawled beneath it and mopped it up on all fours. By the time she looked up at the clock, it read well past one in the morning--and for a Sunday night, this was  _ late _ . Tifa haphazardly packed some food in containers for her and Cloud and rushed out the door, nearly leaving her coat behind.

She speeds down the street, unaware of her quiet surroundings. She thinks,  _ I hope I didn’t keep him waiting. He must be starving _ .

As she passes the shaded entrance to the junkyard, which lies just beyond the weapons shop, she barely notices a group of three men loitering around, keeping their eyes on Tifa. As a young girl, Tifa feared these kinds of men; she’d walk home, eyes trained on the ground, hands shaking as they clutched her house keys tightly. She didn’t know whether to walk as normal or burst into a run toward the safety of her own apartment. But Tifa’s different now--she’s longer afraid of the men who hide in the shadows. If anything,  _ they’re  _ afraid of  _ Tifa _ . Word spreads quickly in the slums; after Tifa’s first win in a street brawl, no one bothered to take her on.

But these men obviously weren’t from Sector 7, because they hadn’t gotten the message.

As Tifa passes them, the men emerge from their place, calling out to Tifa as she continues to walk away from them. “Hey, sweetheart! Where do ya’ think your goin’?”

“Home,” Tifa replies from over her shoulder.

“Now, now, isn’t it a little  _ rude  _ not stop for someone who’s just tryin’ to be  _ polite _ ?” Tifa hears the man’s feet shuffle in the dirt, drawing nearer. “If you don’t stop walkin’, we’ll just have to give you an etiquette lesson.”

Tifa slows down to a halt, sighing deeply before turning around to face them. The three men have formed a triangle and approach her with hands twitching by their pockets. They all wear similar clothes--leather jackets and vests, ripped and faded pants, long hair pinned behind their heads in a lazy fashion, as if done without care or in a rush. It’s cliche, but Tifa recognizes the style straight out of Wall Market. 

The guy standing in the middle has a long, thick, dark scar that runs from just below the eye all the way down the neck. “Saw you leave that bar over there, angel,” he says with a cocky smirk. “Was wonderin’ if you could answer a few questions for us.”

“Depends,” Tifa says. “I might not have answers for you.”

“Oh, I think you  _ will _ ,” he replies. “We heard a rumor that there’s a man with a gun for an arm who lives around here. We’re  _ hopin’ _ you could shed some light on that.”

Tifa sucks in a quick breath. She’s danced this waltz before. Some sleazy guys will blow into down, guns blazing, demanding an audience with Barret. Tifa always says, “ _ Gun for an arm? Doesn’t ring a bell. _ ” Sometimes that’s enough, and whoever’s asking gets the message and leaves her alone. Other times, it takes a lot more.

Good thing Tifa’s wearing her gloves.

Like reciting lines in a play, Tifa tells him, “ _ Gun for an arm _ ? Doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry.”

“ _ Really _ ? That’s funny… ” The guy steps closer, taking something from his pocket and putting his hand out in front of him. The object he removed glints in the light from the streetlamp, registering in Tifa’s mind as a knife. “Because a little birdy told me he’d been at that  _ bar  _ earlier. The  _ very same bar  _ you just came from.”

“Weird,” Tifa says, standing firmly in place. “I didn’t see anyone like that.”

“Would ya’ like me to jog your memory, then?”

Tifa finally releases that baited breath in one, long, tired sigh. She gently places the two leftover containers on the floor behind her, along with her folded coat. Methodically, she cracks her neck, then her knuckles, and finally adjusts her gloves so they sit comfortably on her hands and wrists. She says, “Let’s make this fast. My dinner’s getting cold.”

“This one’s got a  _ mouth _ ,” one of the men flanking the leader says.

“All the more reason to give her that etiquette lesson!” responds the other.

The guy on the right lunges at Tifa first, but she blocks his first blow with her gauntlet and gives him a swift kick to the stomach, sending him backwards. The leader, brandishing his knife, aims for her neck but she catches his wrists in her grip and throws him aside.

The third--obviously much bigger than the other two--comes after Tifa from the right. He manages to grab her wrist  _ at first _ , but she uses her free leg to sweep at his ankles. When he begins to lose balance, Tifa grabs his forearm and flips him over her shoulder, using his massive weight against him and slamming him against the dusty ground.

While she has her back turned, the leader takes another shot. Tifa hears his feet drag and turns around with just enough time to block his knife, using both wrists to fight against the pressure of his arm coming down at her. As Tifa holds him at bay, digging her back leg into the dirt for support, she thinks,  _ I’ve gotta get some leverage here. If I throw him off balance, maybe I can disarm him…  _

But out of the corner of her eye, Tifa notices that first guy coming at her--while she has both hands tied.

_ Shit. Shit shit shit. _

Tifa has only one second to plan a response.  _ Okay. Push the guy with the knife away, then draw back. Deal with the loose end first. Then, you can go after that knife--it’ll be a one-on-one fight. _

But Tifa never gets to enact this plan. 

Because a flash of navy blue jumps in behind her, cutting down the stray and pulling the man with the knife away from Tifa, giving her room to breathe. Cloud puts himself in between Tifa and the leader, sword out in front of him. Tifa doesn’t see his face, but her eyes fall onto his tense shoulders, and the tight grip of his gloved hands on the hilt of his sword.

“You assholes got somewhere  _ else _ to be?” Cloud says through a clenched jaw. “Get the hell out of town or you’ll wish you never came here.”

The big guy Tifa knocked away scrambles to his feet. The leader grabs hold of the man Cloud cut down, who bleeds from his forearm, and the three scurry off, yelling curses and shouting insults the whole way back to the station.

Cloud breathes deeply and sheaths his sword on his back. He finally faces Tifa, locking her in his intense gaze--only this time, his eyes are doing  _ that thing _ Tifa likes so much, where the ocean blue surges forward in full force. He says softly, “You okay?”

Tifa nods. “I’m good. Thanks, Cloud.”

“What were those guys after, anyway?” Cloud asks, glancing in the direction they ran off to. “You owe them something?”

“No, it’s just… ” Tifa lowers her voice. “Avalanche stuff. Nothing you should worry about.”

“I’ll worry a little bit,” Cloud tells her, “if  _ you’re _ involved.”

Tifa feels her cheeks burning. She thinks they probably turned bright red, and thanks God that the dim street lights hide it from Cloud.  _ I guess I really  _ did  _ worry him. _

And then, it hits Tifa like a ton of bricks.  _ The food! _

In the scuffle, the food boxes were crushed under boots and bodies, smashed into the dirt and ruined. Tifa runs over in a vain effort to salvage something,  _ anything _ , but the food she’d prepared and brought home for her and Cloud could no longer be eaten. Defeated, she hunches her shoulders and looks to Cloud apologetically. “I’m sorry, Cloud. This was  _ supposed  _ to be dinner… ”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Cloud. He fumbles around with something in his pocket and holds out a bag that jingles when he shakes it around. He gestures for Tifa to put out her hand and sets the pouch down. It’s heavier than she expects. “From today’s jobs. That’s a thousand gil.”

“ _ A thousand _ ?” Tifa ogles at the pouch, feeling the weight of a thousand gil in her palms. She’s  _ never _ had this much gil at one time, and she doesn’t even know what to  _ do  _ with it. She stammers when she tells Cloud, “I-uh, this is  _ way too much _ . I-I can’t  _ possibly  _ take it all—“

“What’s two months’ rent?” asks Cloud. “Five, six hundred? Plus everything  _ extra _ , like dinner. That’s at  _ least _ a thousand.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right… ” But even so, Tifa feels like she’s taking advantage of him. This time,  _ Tifa  _ has the aggressive gaze, the intensity which locks  _ Cloud  _ in place, as she hands him back the pouch of gil and says, “No. You keep this. Pay me back from what you earn on the next job.”

“But, Tifa--”

“I  _ mean  _ it!” Tifa insists. “You have  _ no  _ clothes,  _ no  _ luggage… You should spend this on yourself. Okay?”

Cloud’s eyebrows turn downward, almost like he’s pouting. (Up until this point, Tifa wasn’t sure he could even  _ manage  _ an expression like this.) Reluctantly, he takes back the bag of gil and returns it to his pocket. When he looks back at Tifa, his expression returns to normal, and in a low voice he states firmly, “You’re at  _ least  _ letting me buy us dinner. That fair?”

Tifa smiles, relieved once again that the darkness hides her blush. “ _ That _ I’ll allow.”

* * *

Tifa takes Cloud to the train station. The station is the only place in town where people gather  _ this  _ late on a Sunday, and luckily all the food stalls have their lights on. Cloud orders the food and brings it back to the bench where Tifa sits. He takes his spot right next to her and hands her a container filled with food.

Tifa only  _ now  _ realizes how hungry she is. Without thinking, she begins to scarf down her meal, only stopping when she remembers how  _ rude  _ it must look to Cloud, who hasn’t even  _ opened  _ his container yet. She covers her mouth when she says, “This isn’t very ladylike of me, is it?”

Tifa thinks she sees a smile briefly find its way on Cloud’s face, but she can’t be sure. He says, “Who cares about being ladylike? You had a long day.”

“Not hungry?” she asks him, pointing to the food he’s barely even touched.

Cloud shakes his head. “I am. Just… not a big eater.”

“You’ll get too thin if you don’t eat enough, working as a merc in this town,” Tifa warns him playfully. She nudges his arm and points with her fork to the food vendor, adding, “The lady who runs the food stall is actually a really good cook. If you tell her you know me, she’ll make you her specialty stew.”

Cloud keeps his eyes to the floor. “You really know everything about this town,” he says quietly, “huh?”

Tifa nods. “Well, I’ve been here almost five years. You learn a lot with all that time on your hands.”

“You know, Tifa,” Cloud says quietly, “you haven’t changed at all.”

Tifa stops eating, mid-bite, and sets her fork down on her plate. She turns toward Cloud, finding his eyes still trained on the pavement by his feet. She cocks her head and asks, “Is that good or bad?”

Cloud looks up, Mako eyes soft and deep, as he stares beyond the faint golden glow of the station plaza and out into the darkness. “It’s good. I’m glad.”

Tifa hurriedly turns away when she feels her cheeks burning. Cloud’s been making her feel this way a  _ lot  _ tonight. Rarely nowadays does Tifa find herself flustered, warm from head to toe, but  _ Cloud  _ makes her feel this way constantly. That much hasn’t changed since they were kids, when Tifa would hear Cloud whisper goodnight to her so that his mom and Tifa’s parents wouldn’t hear them chatting so late on a weeknight. Or when he invited her to the water tower that one chilly night, and she convinced herself that she could tell Cloud how she felt about him before it was too late and he was gone forever, only to chicken out at the last second.

Cloud’s voice brings Tifa back to reality, back to the train station just after midnight. “Do you still play piano?”

“ _ Hm _ ?”

“Do you still play the piano?” Cloud leans back against the bench, relaxing his shoulders, looking up at the plate above their heads. “I remember back home, I would always hear you practicing.”

Tifa nods. She recalls her old room and her piano standing in the corner, an upright in disrepair that her parents had saved up to buy for her. Her father  _ insisted  _ she take lessons, so that maybe one day she could perform on stage, in the big city of Midgar. And she enjoyed them-- _ at first _ . Until she fell behind, put too much pressure on herself, kept thinking,  _ What if I fail at this? What if I don’t make it into an orchestra?? What if…  _

So she switched her focus. She met Zangan one day when he wandered through town and began practicing his form of martial arts. And piano became secondary--but, even now, she still loves to play, to find the rhythm and sound of beautiful music in her fingers and make it real. Biggs and Wedge even found a piano for the bar in one of Sector 7’s scrap yards. Jessie fixed it up, and sometimes--when the evenings are particularly quiet--Tifa will find herself drawn to it.

She tells Cloud, simply, “Sometimes, yeah.”

“You were pretty good at it,” he replies.

“That’s what my dad always said,” Tifa admits, now looking at the ground just in case tears welled up in her eyes. She doesn’t often cry about her father anymore, but she can’t always help it. “He was so mad when I picked up martial arts instead. He thought it was a waste of time… ”

Tifa’s words hang in the silence, as Cloud shifts uncomfortably. Her eyes are trained on the floor, so at first she doesn’t notice he’s looking at her until he turns back around, unable to hold eye contact. His next words come out as a whisper.

“Tifa, I… I’m sorry about your dad.”

Tifa nearly drops her plate of food. She didn’t expect to hear those words come from Cloud. She didn’t expect him to  _ know _ . Years and years of buying the paper every week, and not once did Shinra tell the truth about Nibelheim. Not once did they talk about the fire, the killing, the  _ carnage _ . Not once did they name any survivors, or post any obituaries.

But Cloud  _ must  _ know. How else would they have explained it, when Cloud stopped hearing from his mother?

_ Cloud’s mother. _

Tifa remembers early on, just after arriving in Midgar, that she tried getting in touch with Cloud through friends. He had the right to know about her, the way she died. Tifa thought perhaps she wasn’t the best person to tell him--but she wondered, if she  _ didn’t  _ say anything, would anyone else? Would  _ Shinra _ ? But in the end, it didn’t matter--no one knew of Cloud’s whereabouts.

But she’s glad he knows. She’s glad  _ someone _ told him--she can’t imagine going through life, not knowing your mother was killed by…

She sucks in one, long breath.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m sorry, too. About your mom.”

Cloud winces and clutches his head. Another headache, though this time less intense than the ones he’d had at the station yesterday. He lets out a small sound of pain, his arm and shoulders tensing up, his neck bowing toward the floor. Tifa sets aside her food and puts her hand on his back, but by this time he’s already recovered. He emits one sigh, before saying, “I’m fine,” in a vain attempt to reassure her.

“Are you sure?” asks Tifa.

“Yeah. It’s just a sore subject.”

Tifa can understand that. It’s rare that she ever talks about her father when people ask, and even rarer that she speaks of him unprovoked. People tend to dwell on it. To ask if she’s okay, if she needs anything. To ask  _ how it happened _ . Tifa won’t entertain these questions, and so she keeps the likelihood of someone asking them at the bare minimum. Not even Barret, her closest friend in Sector 7, the man who took her in after everything she’d been through on the outside, knew about her past. She liked it that way.

She knows better than to ask Cloud, but she wonders to herself how he found out.

“I get it. No more,” Tifa promises.

The rest of the evening is spent under that yellow lamplight, listening to Cloud’s stories from his time in SOLDIER. Tifa’s favorite is Cloud’s trip to Modeoheim; he describes endless fields of snow. “We almost  _ never _ got snow like that in Nibelheim,” adds Cloud. “Wish you could’a seen it.” By the way he describes it, Tifa can close her eyes and picture a blue sky above white plains, the cold brushing against her arms, the crunch of snow under SOLDIER standard issue boots.

Cloud’s always had this mysterious power, this ability to take her far away. More and more, he shows Tifa a side of himself that she recognizes, a person she remembers from her hometown. That young, quiet and yet hopeful boy with this strange, idyllic worldview--he’s here with her still, even now. He comes out now and then, conveniently when she starts doubting that he’s still in there somewhere beyond the Mako, the uniform, the hardened exterior.

SOLDIER changed Cloud. That much Tifa knows is certain. She doesn’t exactly understand  _ what  _ changed, or  _ why _ , but she has time to figure all that out. What’s more important is that  _ Cloud  _ isn’t gone, replaced with someone new. Cloud is still Cloud. There are parts of him that she still understands. The other parts, the mysterious and scary parts, she can piece together as they spend more time together.

It’s only a matter of time before everything becomes clear. Right?

* * *

_ The winter air in Nibelheim was chilly and harsh. Snow, even on the coldest winter days, rarely ever fell on Nibelheim. Tifa can count on one hand the number of times she remembers going out with her friends, making snow angels on the lawn of the Shinra mansion, using her father’s old and tattered scarfs to dress snowmen in front of the old general store. _

_ On one of these rare days, Tifa walked out in the snow, toward the old water tower, and found Cloud sitting on the platform high above her hair, legs dangled off the side. Cloud wore a heavy overcoat, his usually baggy pants, and a hat covering the top of his head--though his hair, longer than it was when he and Tifa were little kids, stuck out from the bottom. _

_ Tifa called up to him from where she stood on the ground below. “Hey, Cloud. Whatcha doin’ all the way up there?” _

_ For the first time, Cloud looked up from whatever he had been reading and curtly said, “What’s it look like?” _

_ Tifa frowned. Over the years since they played stupid little games together in the plaza, Cloud had grown distant. He rarely came out to play with Tifa and her friends (although she could understand why; her friends had never treated him the way she did). When she ran into him at the schoolhouse, he only briefly acknowledged her, if at all, before heading in the opposite direction. Even their interactions at their bedroom windows became strained, forced. She tried asking him about his day, only for him to reply with one or two words before excusing himself. _

_ She thought maybe she’d done something to Cloud to make him upset. Tifa was wild and reckless in those days; she didn’t realize it then, but her mother’s passing affected her deeply, and it consumed her thoughts. To deal with it, she often did things that she later regretted. She wondered if, in one of these instances of anger, of frustration, of sadness, she hurt Cloud’s feelings. _

_ But, then again, the way he looked at Tifa never changed. So maybe she was just overthinking things, as always. _

_ “What are you reading, then?” Tifa further pestered, beginning her ascent up the water tower. “Is that  _ Loveless _? Reading it for school?” _

_ Cloud simply nodded. _

_ Tifa took a seat beside him, fixing the way her scarf laid on her shoulders. “I’m s’posed to read it, too,” Tifa told him. “But, I dunno… it’s really hard to focus… ” Tifa never really excelled in reading. Math, science, music--those were her strong points. But not reading. The words on the page would start to blend together after a while, her brain turning to mush trying to separate them, until she’d get upset and just give up. Unlike Cloud. _

_ No, Cloud was better at that. More patient. He always  _ was _. _

_ “You think so?” asked Cloud, closing the book in his lap. “Seems easy to me.” _

_ “Really?” Tifa replied. Sheepishly, she turned away from him. “Every time I try to read it, I get so confused… ” _

_ There was a long silence between them, and Tifa felt Cloud’s eyes on her for a moment. She didn’t turn to look at him because she thought he’d notice her flush against the snowy white backdrop of the town. It wasn’t until she heard him speak to her once more that she finally mustered the courage to face him again. _

_ “You know,” Cloud said in a whisper, “I can read it to you.” _

_ “Wh--are you serious?” Tifa said, more exasperated and surprised than she intended. “You’d really do that?” _

_ “Sure,” Cloud said, shrugging, now  _ his _ face obscured so that  _ Tifa  _ couldn’t read him. “It’s not that long.” _

_ Tifa nodded excitedly. “Okay. I’d like that.” _

_ “There’s three main characters,” Cloud told her, holding up three gloved fingers. “It’s the hero, the traveler, and the prisoner. Got it?” _

_ “Got it.” _

_ “And they’re searching for the gift of the goddess.” _

_ “Gift?” Tifa asked, cocking her head. “Why’s that?” _

_ “To save the world,” Cloud answered. “I can’t say too much ‘cause it’ll spoil the story for you.” _

_ Cloud began to read from the book again, very clearly and purposefully unlike how he normally spoke. Cloud’s voice usually never dared waver from its one distinct low tone, never dared to hint at what he felt beneath his steely exterior. He’d always been like that, but it had gotten more obvious over time, as he showed less and less of himself to even Tifa, who reached out to him any chance she could. _

_ But on that snowy day, sitting at the water tower, Cloud’s voice rose and fell to the cadence of the story he told to Tifa, expressing each and every character’s emotions in a way that real-life Cloud wouldn’t even  _ consider _. Tifa found it strange, yet comforting, to hear Cloud speak in this way. She loved it. She even closed her eyes for a moment and found three figures standing before her--the hero, the traveler, and the prisoner, just as Cloud had described them to her. Whenever he talked about them, told Tifa their story, they’d reenact the words in her imagination. _

_ She liked the prisoner in particular. When Cloud read the part where he nearly dies, shot by an enemy’s poisoned arrow, Tifa audibly gasped, and Cloud stopped reading. _

_ “You okay?” he asked her. _

_ “I’m worried about the prisoner,” Tifa admitted, her hands in tight fists on her lap, eyes trained downward to look at the plaza covered in a blanket of white like paper. “Does he make it? Or does he… ?” _

_ Cloud’s eyes softened when they looked at her. They rarely did this  _ before  _ he distanced himself, so seeing them  _ now  _ was even more surreal. Cloud and Tifa held each other’s gazes--no, not “held”, but “embraced”, like Cloud was trying to hug Tifa without touching her. _

_ He finally said, “No. He doesn’t die. He makes it.” _

_ “Really?!” Tifa asked hopefully. _

_ Cloud nodded. “Yeah. He meets this girl, and they… uh… they… ” _

_ “Fall in love?” _

_ Now, Tifa  _ and  _ Cloud were both painted red. He hurriedly turned away before answering her, “Yeah. That’s it.” _

_ “So, happily ever after,” Tifa said, “right?” _

_ “Sort of,” Cloud explained. “He’s happy, but he always feels a little guilty about leaving the hero and the traveler behind. It’s like… ” Cloud sighed deeply. “Nothing in life is perfect, ya know? But for the prisoner, it’s about having to accept that. That nothing’s ever gonna be  _ exactly _ right, and that’s okay.” _

_ Cloud finished reading the story, and he and Tifa parted ways.  _

_ The rest of that night, and many nights after it, Tifa stayed up and wondered about the prisoner. About the woman he loved enough to give up everything--the glory, the title, the fate of the world. She wondered what it felt like to love someone that much. She wondered if that’s the way her father loved her mother. She wondered if all grown-ups loved each other that way. _

  
_ She wondered if she’d ever love someone like that--or if she already  _ did _. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I just wanna say thanks to everyone who's made comments and left kudos on this story, it means so much to me. ;-; I may not have responded but just know they are all greatly appreciated!!!


	6. rebuilding

* * *

The week breezes by so fast that Tifa barely notices the days change. She and Cloud fall into a  _ new  _ routine. Cloud sleeps in; Tifa wakes up early and makes coffee. At first, Cloud refuses to take a cup--”Not really my  _ thing _ ,” he tells her--but after a while he starts rising earlier, when he hears the coffee pot begin to heat the water, and pours himself half a mug. Dark. No milk, and just the tiniest bit of sugar. Not like Tifa’s cup, which she fills halfway with  _ only  _ milk and sugar, topping it off with a little whipped cream on special occasions.

Depending on his docket, Cloud will usually leave first; Wymer keeps him busy with jobs most days, and he barely has a free moment until he comes home in the evenings. But on slow days, when Cloud has no jobs lined up, he’ll walk Tifa to the bar. He doesn’t walk her in, though--Tifa’s explained to him already that his presence is a delicate subject, and that she’ll need to wait for the opportune moment to finally tell Barret about him. “He doesn’t trust SOLDIERs. Even  _ ex _ -SOLDIERs. You’d better let me handle things.” Cloud didn’t challenge her.

Tifa notices some  _ interesting _ things about Cloud after living with him for nearly a week. He doesn’t sleep much--or, rather, he  _ sleeps _ , but it’s always restless. Tifa herself is a heavy sleeper, but even so, she wakes up when Cloud shifts uncomfortably in his bed (now a  _ real  _ bed, not a sleeping bag placed on the floor) and goes outside for some fresh air. Once, Tifa decides to ask him why he can’t sleep. His answer is simply, “Just on edge, I guess. Don’t worry about it.” Tifa can’t help but feel a little anxious even after Cloud’s reassurance.

Cloud is more  _ severe  _ now than he was before, maybe even a little cruel. He says to Tifa, “When you’re a SOLDIER, you gotta look out for yourself first. Yourself, and your team.” The violence and chaos of the slums at night doesn’t seem to bother him the way it bothered Tifa when she first arrived; in fact, he barely acknowledges it. Tifa thinks he must have seen far worse in his time, or else he wouldn’t simply turn a blind eye to a fist fight or a person in need of help.  _ I can’t imagine what he’s been through…  _ Tifa tries to push these kinds of thoughts out of her head. It breaks her heart to think about it.

This isn’t to say that Tifa doesn’t see that familiar side of Cloud. She  _ does _ \--more often when they’re alone. This Cloud brushed her hair behind her ear one morning, half asleep, and told her, “You’re working too hard.” Tifa had to quickly excuse herself before he could notice the blush on her cheeks. This same Cloud also quietly whispers goodnight to her as she dozes off; once, when she hadn’t quite fallen asleep yet, she heard him say it. “Goodnight, Tifa…” Something about it was so soft and gentle and unlike anything he’d ever said to her when she was awake. It was all Tifa could think about as she lay in bed.

Life with Cloud required an adjustment period--but, now that she’s past it, Tifa admits to herself that she likes the company. And she likes that it’s  _ Cloud _ . Tifa figures that she never noticed how much she missed him until he came back into her life. Now that he’s here with her, she can’t bear to imagine his bed, in her apartment, empty.

Despite Tifa’s worries, she finds herself acting like a kid around him.

* * *

Tifa’s day off usually falls on Thursdays--the day she forces herself to enjoy some peace and quiet, take a break from worrying about the bar by leaving it in the capable hands of Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. And this  _ particular  _ Thursday, Cloud doesn’t have any requests from Wymer.

“Why don’t you head topside with me?” pesters Tifa as she hands him his coffee, black with just a little sugar. “I need to get some more Corel whiskey and soda for the bar. Might be fun!”

“Not really interested,” Cloud replies. “I should stay here and find work.”

“Work, work, work. Didn’t you  _ just  _ say that  _ I  _ work too hard?” She smirks as she takes a sip of her coffee. “Come on--it’ll get you out of Sector 7 for a while!”

Cloud shrugs. “I don’t really care about seeing the rest of Midgar.”

“And what about getting yourself some clothes?” Tifa prods, tugging on the sleeve of the baggy shirt Cloud wears, still borrowing from Barret’s laundry. “You know, I have to give all these clothes back  _ eventually _ .”

Tifa catches Cloud’s gaze, though he sheepishly tries to hide it from her. After a moment, she notices the corners of his mouth twitch upwards just a little, the promise of a smile taunting her. But it never fully reveals itself. Cloud finally gives in. “Okay. You win. Where to?”

“Sector 4,” Tifa says, jumping up excitedly and moving around Cloud to get ready. “This will be a lot of fun, okay? You’ll see.”

“Yeah, all right,” Cloud says. “Maybe.”

Cloud and Tifa both get ready quickly and head for the station. By now, some of the folks of Sector 7 have taken notice of Cloud. He’s a regular here; that initial distrust, that innate, instinctual hatred for his uniform and his title started to wash away. Now, they know  _ him _ . He’s not a SOLDIER; he’s the merc. The merc who dealt with the fiends in the junkyard. The merc who found that guy who’d been missing for two days, drugged up on Mako but  _ alive  _ in a hidden alleyway across town. The merc who would do  _ any  _ job for the right price. It gives Tifa peace of mind--one less thing to worry about when it comes to Cloud.

This early on a weekday, the trains are packed. Tifa and Cloud are squeezed into a car by commuters heading topside for their office jobs, their backs pressed against the cold metal train walls. Tifa’s used to a crowd like this; Cloud’s clearly  _ not _ . Tifa watches his eyes widen slightly, his chest heave up and down quickly. He tries to play it off, act like being pressed into such a tight space doesn’t make him want to scream. But Tifa can tell.

She can tell because she feels that way, too. Not about tight spaces, though--about  _ heights _ . She recalls when Barret was refurbishing the abandoned husk that would become Seventh Heaven. Tifa was hauling planks up a ladder and onto the second floor landing when she got too close to the edge and looked down. A dizzy spell overtook her. Her heart began to pound rapidly against her chest. It all became too  _ real _ , in that moment--the distance from where Tifa stood to the ground below.

“You know,” Tifa whispers to Cloud, who stands noticeably close to her given the small space, “it helps if you look out the window.”

Cloud nods. “Got it. Thanks.”

“Have you always been claustrophobic?” asks Tifa. She starts to stammer when Cloud’s focused eyes fall on her. “Oh, uh, sorry. I don’t wanna pry or anything… it’s just… ”

“Tifa.” Cloud’s voice stops Tifa’s mouth from running wild. He says it in a way that matches the intensity of his eyes. “You don’t have to keep apologizing to me.”

“Right. Sorry--uh,  _ shit _ . I mean, I’ll keep that in mind.”

Tifa sees that elusive smile just  _ barely  _ show itself on Cloud’s face before hiding away again. He turns so that he’s looking out the train window and says, “I think I just like my personal space is all.”

The train leaves the Sector 7 station with one powerful lurch forward. Jessie talks endlessly about the trains in Midgar, enough that Tifa can recite some of her facts verbatim while she watches the slums move past the window in a blur.  _ Did you know it took nearly twenty years and 13 million gil for the Midgar railway system to be finished? And it takes almost 150 gallons of concentrated Mako just to make one trip all the way around Midgar.  _

That last part in particular really gets Jessie’s blood boiling. Whenever she says it, she’ll ball her fists up on the bar, or hold her drink with white knuckles, and continue with, “I can’t believe I took that train every morning on the way to school… ” Tifa always tries to console her, because how could little Jessie have  _ known _ ? And what could she have  _ done _ , even if she  _ did  _ know? But Tifa’s words are lost on Jessie, who can’t seem to accept things that are out of her control.

The train starts to wrap around the central pillar. From where she and Cloud are standing, Tifa can see the plate overhead and the world beyond it--the world outside of Midgar. She says to Cloud quietly, “It’s weird, right?”

Cloud furrows his brow, keeping his eyes trained on the view. “What’s weird?”

“Seeing what’s on the outside,” Tifa explains. “Seeing what’s past the plate.”

“When’s the last time you left Midgar?” Cloud asks.

Tifa shakes her head. She counts the days, weeks, months,  _ years _ . Finally, she tells him, “I haven’t left Midgar since I got here five years ago.”

“That’s a long time to stay in one place.”

“I know.”

“Do you ever think about leaving?”

Tifa purses her lips together.  _ Does  _ she? There are moments when she stares up at the plate and feels an ache in her heart. An ache for the Sun in the daytime and the stars at night. Am ache to feel grass beneath her feet and wind on her face. An ache for a world not made of metal frames. But then she feels just a little sad, because Midgar is her  _ home _ . She had another home, once--but Nibelheim is gone now, gone forever and not coming back. And in the five years she’s been in Sector 7, she’s grown to love the people there, the community. The friendships she’s made and the life she’s built.

She tells Cloud, “It’s kind of complicated.”

“I’ve got time.”

“It’s like… ” Tifa sighs. “I want to leave. But I wanna know that I can come back. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, of course.”

As the train moves upward, into the  _ real  _ sunshine on the upper plate, Tifa thinks about the bar, about Avalanche, about Biggs and Wedge and Jessie. About Barret and Marlene. And about this home away from home that she’s built. It was necessity that made her stay in Midgar before; but it’s this feeling of  _ warmth _ that comes when she sees a familiar face at the bar, chats with Marle before heading into work, arm wrestles Biggs or Barret as Jessie playfully places her bets, that keeps her here now.

And maybe that same feeling will keep  _ Cloud  _ here, too.

* * *

_ Bloodied and bruised from her fight that morning, Tifa took her winnings and went to the coffee house next to the Sector 2 station. Tifa didn’t drink a lot of coffee in those days; she barely even  _ ate _. But when she won in a fight, especially when the bets were stacked against her, she celebrated by buying herself a special treat--a chocolate chip muffin, fresh baked. This coffee house happened to sell them. _

_ And they also sold copies of the morning paper. _

_ Tifa got some dirty looks when she entered the shop. How could people  _ not  _ stare, when her clothes were ripped and soaked in blood--hers,  _ and  _ her opponent’s. Tifa herself was disheveled, a black and blue mark developing just beneath her right eye and a tooth missing from the right side of her mouth, lost in a fight last week. Tifa didn’t care much about her appearance during her earliest days in Midgar. She barely had time to care; she was too busy looking for work, scavenging for food and gil, finding a safe place to sleep each night. And, of  _ course _ , fighting kept her pretty busy, too. _

_ This morning it was a guy a little older than her, and much bigger. He stood about a foot taller than her and looked strong. The spectators predicted that Tifa would lose, four to one. Tifa’s looks surely were deceiving--standing at only five-foot-four, particularly thin in those days since she could hardly afford to feed herself. No one in their right mind would have bet on her in a match-up against the hulking man before her. _

_ But they didn’t know Tifa. They didn’t know how desperately she wanted to survive. She didn’t know what she’d faced before. _

_ The fight itself was easy. Tifa threw a few punches that didn’t land--a way to trick her opponent, to make him think she couldn’t handle herself in the ring. She even allowed him to land one, just one, right in the eye. The force of his punch made Tifa stagger backwards and the crowd gasp in shock. But Tifa could take it. She always did. _

_ But that’s when she got serious. She took her stance, Zangan’s voice in her head shouting, “Plant that back leg firmly. That’s your anchor!” This time, when her opponent lunged at her, she ducked away from his punch. She threw her own and it landed firmly on his jaw, sending him backwards. The crowd became uproarious. _

_ The man couldn’t recover from his shock. He lunged again--this time more desperately, more clumsily. Tifa easily avoided him, rolling behind him. Before he could react, Tifa grabbed him from behind and lifted him over her head. Then, in one swift, quick motion, she flipped, suplexing her opponent into the ground beneath them. _

_ He struggled, at first, but unable to escape Tifa’s grasp that pinned him to the ground, he finally tapped out. And Tifa took home two hundred gil. _

_ “Excuse me, ma’am?” the barista called Tifa, snapping her out of her daydream. “Are you gonna order something?” _

_ Tifa nodded. “One chocolate muffin. And today’s newspaper.” _

_ As she walked away from the shop, she heard footsteps trailing behind her. Several footsteps, that would stop and move in sync with Tifa. She was being followed. Using the metal knuckle guard on her gloves as a mirror, she made out three distinct figures, all bigger than her, and one of whom she recognized as the guy she fought in the ring that morning. _

_ “Shit.” _

_ She picked up the pace. She thought maybe she could lose them if she cut through the backstreets of Sector 2 and got to Sector 3. Sector 3 would be packed with people heading into the office for work at this time; she would disappear easily in the crowd, and they’d never be able to find her. From there, it’d be a straight shot to the station and back to her hangout in Sector 4. _

_ At the first alleyway she found, she turned sharply to the right. The guys followed suit. Tifa walked even faster. When the alley opened back up to another street, she looked around and spotted another, even tighter alley across from her. She knew  _ that  _ alley--she’d used it plenty of times before to run away from assholes trying to mug her for her gil, or from people angry that they’d lost bets they’d placed against her in a fight. _

_ But when she reached the alley, she saw that the path to Sector 3 had been closed off by a fence too tall for her to jump. _

_ She was, effectively, trapped. _

_ “Hey, Lockhart!” The voice came from one of the boys behind her. “You stiffed us!” _

_ “Yeah,” another added. “You played us! You fuckin’ cheated!” _

_ Tifa turned around, scared but trying hard not to show it. Nowadays, a three-against-one fight wouldn’t worry Tifa, but back then she was inexperienced and lacked confidence in her own abilities. She didn’t think she could win against them. She knew if she showed any fear, they’d take that as an opportunity to beat her down, so she put on a mask of calm and said, “I didn’t stiff you. You stiffed  _ yourselves _ by underestimating me.” _

_ “Big talk, Lockhart, but that’s not gonna fly,” said the biggest guy, the one from the fight. He pulled out a long, thin knife from his pocket and continued, “Just give us the money you won and we’ll be on our way.” _

_ “I don’t have the money anymore,” Tifa said, catching her voice before it became shaky. She waves the newspaper around. “I spent it.” _

_ “You  _ spent  _ it?” one of the guys laughed bitterly. “Shouldn’ta done that, Lockhart. Now you’re really gonna get it.” _

_ Tifa backed up into the metal fence, unable to go any further. The guys came at her brandishing knives and devious smiles. At that moment, Tifa couldn’t feel anything. She was numb from her own fear and bad luck. She couldn’t believe that  _ this  _ was how it would end for her, after surviving a raging fire, a stabbing, thirty stitches in her chest, and countless nights without food or water. After all that, she was gonna be killed by a group of delinquents in a dirty Sector 2 alleyway. _

_ She sighed deeply but kept her feet planted firmly. If this was how it would go, then she would go out fighting. _

_ But she never got to fight them. All the sudden, gunshots rang out from behind the boys that caused them to scatter. A large figure--larger than even the biggest of the guys that cornered Tifa--appeared from behind a wall, shouting, “Y’all better back the hell off of that poor girl before I put a bullet in your heads!” In the shadowy alleway Tifa couldn’t make out any details, but she saw the flashes from his gun, pointed to the sky, against the brick walls, followed swiftly by ear-shattering pops. _

_ “Shit, we gotta get outta here!” _

_ The guys fled swiftly, two making a right toward the outer sector and another making a left to head back to the station. _

_ Tifa’s heart wouldn’t stop beating relentlessly in her chest. The mystery man approached her, and Tifa thought that maybe, just maybe,  _ he  _ would be the one to kill her. That his heroism was a ruse to get her alone then shoot her like a dog. Maybe he had bet against her and was looking for repayment. Maybe it was a mercenary or a hitman--Tifa had read enough stories in the paper of professional killers hired out by the rich to commit deadly crimes. _

_ But as his face became illuminated in the daylight, Tifa saw that the man had kind eyes , full of concern and empathy, that overshadowed his tough and hardened exterior. And that gun? It wasn’t a handgun, like Tifa thought at first. It was a gun augmented directly into his forearm. _

_ “Saw those guys followin’ you,” said the man. “Wanted to make sure you were alright.” _

_ “Thanks,” Tifa said flatly. _

_ “I’m Barret. Barret Wallace.” _

_ Barret held out his hand, and Tifa looked at it hesitantly. She’d spent the last year and a half avoiding people, not allowing them to get close to her. She didn’t make friends because she didn’t  _ want  _ friends--not in this town, at least. Tifa didn’t choose to come to Midgar; she was forced here by circumstance. And every person she’d ever loved was either dead, or nowhere to be found. She placed all her hopes in a name she had yet to find in the hundreds of newspapers she bought and threw away. _

_ She’d been so bitter for so long that she forgot what it even  _ felt  _ like to trust another person. But here she found herself in an alleyway, saved by the kindness of a stranger. And she didn’t know whether to return that same kindness, or accept that this was just a stroke of good fortune and walk away without looking back. _

_ Tifa’s exterior may have grown cold and distant, but her heart hadn’t. Not yet. _

_ Tifa met Barret’s handshake halfway. “I’m Tifa. Tifa Lockhart.” _

* * *

After some encouragement and playful teasing from Tifa, Cloud finally decided to buy himself some clothes. As he and Tifa walk toward the liquor store, he shakes the bag and says to Tifa, “You know, I’m still gonna wear  _ this _ when I go to work,” gesturing at his SOLDIER uniform, fresh and clean from last night’s wash.

“I know, I know,” Tifa taunts. “And you  _ should _ . It’ll do wonders for your rep.  _ Everyone’s  _ gonna wanna come to the  _ ex _ -SOLDIER for favors.”

“But I guess it’ll be nice,” Cloud concedes, “to wear clothes that  _ fit _ for a change.”

The liquor store owner greets Tifa when she walks in, Cloud following closely behind. Tifa has known the guy who runs the store for years, ever since she first started bartending for Seventh Heaven. He’s the only guy in town who sells the very  _ specific  _ brand of Corel whiskey that Barret loves, and the only place Tifa shops for this very reason.

“Got a call from Barret yesterday,” says the shopkeeper, leaning on the counter. “Two bottles of Corel Premium barrel-aged whiskey, huh? You guys must be _cleanin’_ _up_ lately.”

“We’ve had a couple of good months,” Tifa tells him, setting her own back of workout clothes on the counter. “And you know  _ Barret _ . He likes to have this stuff on hand for special occasions.”

“Well, this is the best stuff. Barret knows his Corel whiskey. You a fan, too?”

Tifa shrugs. “I’ll drink it here and there. It’s a little  _ strong  _ for me, though.” Tifa turns to Cloud, who has his arms crossed over his chest and watches the shopkeeper intently. He is taken aback when Tifa asks, “What about you, Cloud? You ever tried Corel whiskey?”

“Dunno,” replies Cloud, tapping his foot to the floor in thought. “Is it… different from Junon whiskey?”

“It’s a  _ world’s  _ difference, man,” the shopkeeper says before Tifa has time to respond. He takes a bottle from the shelf and three shot glasses and pours out a sampling of dark brown liquid. The whiskey he chooses is crystal clear, the color of oak, and smells of smoke and spices.  _ Corel  _ whiskey, all right--Tifa has served enough of it to recognize the smell without even looking at it. Cloud picks his glass up and inspects it thoroughly, squinting his eyes at it. He takes a careful sip, then slowly downs the whole shot.

“ _ Wow _ . That’s bitter,” he says, that hard-to-capture smile teasing the corners of his mouth once more.

“No good?” asks Tifa.

“I like it,” Cloud says in reply, putting his glass down on the counter. “It’s got a kick to it.”

“If you thought  _ that  _ was good,” Tifa gloats with a smirk, “wait ‘til you have a Corel old fashioned, mixed by  _ yours truly _ . I’ve heard it’s the best in the slums.”

“ _ Really _ ?” Cloud teases, something Tifa never expected from him. “I’ll be the judge of  _ that _ .”

Tifa pays for the whiskey. It’s  _ steep _ , and she makes a mental note to scold Barret for splurging again. But she can’t complain too much; after all, Barret wants the best for the slums. He always talks about giving the people “ _ the luxuries that the folks on the plate don’t appreciate! _ ” That’s why people come into Seventh Heaven. Tifa’s cooking and hospitality only go so far. They come in, and they  _ keep  _ coming in, because they know that Barret, that Tifa, that  _ everyone _ , wants to make the slums a little more like home.

As Tifa and Cloud leave the liquor store, they don’t notice the dark storm clouds rolling in above their heads.

* * *

_ “So, that’s what you do? Fight for gil?” _

_ Tifa allowed Barret to buy her some food-- _ real  _ food, not the junk she’d been using to sustain herself. But she didn’t answer his questions. She didn’t think she  _ had  _ to answer them. She’d said thank you and only accepted Barret’s offer of food when he insisted--to Tifa, they were even. _

_ So she sat across from him at the diner and simply read the paper. Cover to cover, as she did every Sunday morning. Her eyes grazed over the words “Wutai” and “Mako reactor” and “Midgar plate refurbishment”... Those weren’t the words she cared about. No, there were specific words Tifa looked for. Nibelheim. Sephiroth. SOLDIER. _

_ Cloud Strife. _

_ But none of those words were in today’s paper. They weren’t in the paper last week, either, or the week before. After a while, the words on the page began to melt together in Tifa’s mind once more, giving her a headache, and she set the paper down in frustration. _

_ “ _ That’s _ what you use all your gil for?” Barret asked her. “Readin’ the paper?” _

_ “Paper’s only 100 gil,” said Tifa. _

_ “For 100 gil,” said Barret, “you could get yourself a real breakfast, y’know.” _

_ Tifa rolled her eyes and poked at her eggs, now cold. In those days, Tifa acted out just for the sake of acting out. She was sixteen, almost seventeen, and angry. Angry at a world that abandoned her. Angry at a life she could never get back, that had been forcibly ripped from her hands. Just plain  _ angry  _ sometimes, for no reason. She was raised better than to act this way toward a man nice enough to buy her breakfast, but she couldn’t be bothered to behave. In her mind, she didn’t owe him even a little bit. _

_ “Where’re your parents?” he asked. _

_ “Dead,” Tifa said curtly. “Been dead for a while.” _

_ “You don’t have family to take care of ya?” _

_ “Look, Mr. Barret.” Tifa set down her fork and folded her arms on the table. “This was really nice of you. But I don’t know why you’re going out of your way to buy me breakfast. I haven’t done anything for you, and I’m not  _ gonna  _ do anything for you. So what gives?” _

_ Barret shifted, digging through his jacket pockets to find his wallet. He pulled a tattered photo that looked to be singed on the bottom edge, just like the wallet itself. Tifa took it from him and turned it over in her hands. Pictured was a baby with big brown eyes and a small smile, holding out her hands to grab a toy that was dangled above her head. Tifa caught herself smiling a little but wiped that smile away before looking back up at Barret. _

_ “Okay, who’s the baby?” _

_ “That’s  _ my _ baby,” Barret said. “That’s Marlene.” _

_ Tifa nodded. An image of her own father flashed in her head. She had to take a long, deep breath to keep herself from tearing up. _

_ “How old is she?” Tifa asked. _

_ “She’ll be one year old soon,” Barret told her. “That photo was only taken a couple months ago. We only got to Midgar last week.” _

_ “Oh...” _

_ “You asked me what gives,” explained Barret. “I haven’t been a dad for very long, but something changes when you become a father. You probably won’t get it. But when I saw you gettin’ chased by those assholes back there, I thought about my daughter. I’d be pissed if that ever happened to her.” _

_ Tifa looked at the photo again, studying little Marlene’s features. She actually reminded Tifa a little bit of herself, when she was a baby. Her dad had shown her a few pictures taken right after Tifa was born. When she was little, Tifa’s eyes hadn’t quite developed that deep red color, and looked more brown, just like Marlene’s. And Tifa and Marlene shared dark and stick-straight hair, though Marlene’s was short since she was so small. _

_ Tifa hands the photo back. “It’s a nice picture.” _

_ “How long you been here?” asked Barret. “In Midgar.” _

_ “A year and a half.” _

_ “On the streets that whole time?” _

_ Tifa nodded. _

_ Barret tapped his hand on the table. He shifted in his seat and said, in a low and powerful tone, “It was Shinra, right? Shinra did that to ya?” _

_ Tifa’s eyes widened, her guard dropped. It never occurred to her that someone else could share this same anger, this same hatred. She’d never heard anyone else talk about Shinra in this way. In Midgar, the people worshipped Shinra, because Shinra powers their homes and their cars and puts money in their pockets. The people don’t dare question Shinra’s authority because they think it’ll put their perfect little lives at risk. But Barret wasn’t afraid; that fired-up look in his eyes told Tifa he’d lost something, too, and it was all because of Shinra. _

_ Tifa didn’t say anything, but her agape look told Barret enough. _

_ “Everything they touch with their greedy ass hands turns to dust,” said Barret. “If they keep on destroyin’ the Planet... destroyin’ our lives... I dunno what’s gonna happen if no one stops them.” _

_ Tifa nodded. “Yeah. I know.” _

_ “Listen, Tifa,” Barret said sternly. “I got a job for you. If you want it. No more fightin’, no more gettin’ your teeth knocked out. I’m helpin’ restore an old warehouse in Sector 7. Makin’ it a nice place, for Marlene and me, with a business on the first floor.” Barret leaned on the table. “I can’t pay you right away, but once it’s all fixed up, you won’t have to worry anymore. What d’ya say?” _

_ Tifa tapped nervously on the table top. What  _ did  _ she say to that? What  _ could  _ she? She didn’t particularly like fighting; she hated when she saw herself in the mirror covered in bruises and missing a molar. This wasn’t the girl she wanted to be. It was  _ never  _ the girl she wanted to be. She learned to fight so that she could defend herself, not so that she could con people out of their gil. If Zangan could see her now…  _

_ She didn’t wanna think about it. She already knew how disappointed he would be; she felt that way about herself. _

_ So she decided that a life in Sector 7 was better than a life on her own. _

_ “Mr. Barret,” said Tifa, holding her hand out, “you got yourself a deal.” _

_ Barret returned the handshake with confidence. “Just call me Barret.” _

* * *

Tifa and Cloud barely manage to find shelter under an awning before the rain starts pouring down in buckets. They’re both soaking wet. Tifa’s long hair drips with water and Cloud’s bangs stick to his forehead. They’d been so engrossed in talking about whiskey, about clothes, about Midgar, that they hadn’t even noticed dark clouds over their heads until the first drops of rain; and by then, it was far too late to get to the train without getting caught up in the storm.

“Can you believe it?” Tifa asks, finding herself grinning wildly. “The _one day_ we decide to go topside and it rains on us.”

“What are the odds?” Cloud asks, wringing out his gloves which are drenched in rainwater.

“ _ Now _ how are we gonna get to the station,” Tifa thinks out loud, “without getting rained on?”

Cloud looks up at the storm in thought, then kneels down and rummages through his bag of clothes. He pulls out a black jacket; it’s a windbreaker made of waterproof nylon that Tifa  _ insisted  _ he buy for the winter, when the slums get particularly chilly as the cold air settles beneath the plate. Cloud unzips the jacket and holds it out in front of him.

“Yeah, this’ll do.” He holds it over his head, then waves Tifa to come closer. “Here. You get underneath and grab that side. I’ll grab this side and we’ll both make a run for it. Sound good?”

Tifa obliges, coming closer and ducking underneath the jacket that Cloud holds for her. The jacket isn’t very big, and she and Cloud stand together to fit underneath it. They stand _so_ _close_ that Tifa’s shoulder is pressed tightly against Cloud’s. She can’t look in his direction without feeling that familiar heat rush to her cheeks.

“Okay, on the count of three, we go. One, two,  _ three _ .”

Tifa and Cloud sprint for the station in unison, darting between pedestrians holding umbrellas and cars parked on next to the sidewalks. It was almost pointless, getting Cloud’s new jacket soaked, because when the wind picks up it blows the rain underneath their plastic shield and douses them in water  _ anyway _ . But after a while, Tifa no longer cares. In fact, she finds herself  _ laughing _ , even as she freezes in her wet clothes. Of all the times to rain, in all the places to be, of all the  _ people _ to be  _ with _ … it feels serendipitous, getting caught in a storm like this with Cloud. A boy she’d hoped to see in the paper every week, only to be disappointed, for so long.

When Cloud and Tifa make it to the train, just as the doors begin to clothes, they capture the attention of all the passengers. They trail water behind them as they find their seats.

“Well, that was a waste,” said Cloud, sticking his sopping and crumpled jacket back into its bag and smiling--actually, completely,  _ smiling _ . And now that Tifa finally sees it, she realizes how much she likes it when Cloud smiles.

  
_ No, it wasn’t a waste,  _ Tifa thinks to herself. But she doesn’t say that to Cloud. She simply laughs, raking her hands through her wet hair, and thinking that maybe she was right before, about Cloud making a home here. Because she sees in Cloud the stoic that  _ she _ was once upon a time, and that stone-cold facade seems to already be fading away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more Tifa backstory this time :)  
> i wanted to give poor Cloud a break and focus more on Tifa's origin  
> i'm thinkin' the next chapter will be more lighthearted and fun so stay tuned!!!


	7. when it rains...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello all! i received a comment that pointed out some inconsistencies in Tifa's character. while it was not my intention to paint her in an OOC light, i've decided to make some changes to the original chapter to reflect her intended characterization better. please enjoy what i hope to be a new and improved chapter 7 :)

* * *

Tifa supposes it’s sort of poetic justice, getting sick after lying to Jessie about it over the phone.

After getting caught in the storm, as Tifa and Cloud make their way back to Tifa’s apartment, Tifa starts to feel a little bit cold, even for a November evening in the slums. By the time they get back to Stargazer Heights, the chills fully set in, along with terrible aches that shoot up and down Tifa’s arms. She thinks maybe a warm bath would help; when that doesn’t work, she makes herself some tea.

But she doesn’t tell Cloud that she feels sick. She usually doesn’t tell  _ anyone  _ when she feels sick, unless, of course, she’s too sick to come to work, and then she  _ has  _ to tell someone. It makes Tifa uncomfortable when people fuss over her. She’d rather take care of  _ herself _ , deal with things  _ herself _ \--not pile her problems on others. Especially not when everyone around her deals with so much  _ already _ .

Tifa catches Cloud looking at her more once they get back to the apartment. Analyzing her. She realizes that hiding her fever from him is probably futile anyway; Cloud seems to notice  _ everything _ . She wonders if he picked that up while he was training for SOLDIER.

In the morning, when Tifa wakes up in a cold sweat, face completely red, and fever only getting worse, Cloud finally says something.

“Tifa, you’re burning up,” he says, putting a bare hand to Tifa’s forehead. Tifa tries to move away from his touch, but every little motion makes her ache, and she surrenders. “Why didn’t you tell me last night you weren’t feeling well?”

“Because I’m  _ fine _ ,” Tifa insists, beginning to rise from her bed. “I’m just a little under the weather is all--” She doesn’t finish her sentence, though, because when she props herself up on her hands a pain creeps up her arm and makes her wince.

Cloud raises one eyebrow. “Yeah. You seem fine.”

“Come on, I mean it. I have to get to work.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Cloud gently pushes a pouting Tifa back down. “You’re  _ resting _ . Okay?”

“But--”

“ _ Resting _ ,” Cloud repeats. “No buts.”

Tifa sighs and lays her head down on the pillow. Cloud walks away from her bedside and grabs his sword. “I’ve got a few jobs today, but I’ll be back soon. Promise me you’ll stay in bed while I’m gone?”

Tifa furrows her brows when she looks up at the ceiling.  _ Promise _ . She can’t very well ignore a promise she makes with Cloud.

“Fine. You win.”

Cloud leaves, shutting and locking the door behind him so that Tifa doesn’t need to rise from bed. She turns over to look at her alarm clock. It reads  _ nine-oh-four _ . She should be halfway to the bar by now; it’s just down the block. The lunch rush will come in, and there’s no way Barret and the others will have the place tidied up in time. They’ll be scrambling to put out menus, scrub the bar, sweep the floors… Tifa really  _ should  _ go over there and just help them out, if only for a few minutes…

But, no. She  _ promised _ Cloud.

The aches and pains in her body begin to take their toll. Even with a blanket on, a chill passes through her, right through her skin and into her bones. She closes her eyes, just for a second, but doesn’t realize she falls asleep until the world around her becomes that starry night, blue and green, in Nibelheim seven years ago.

* * *

Tifa doesn’t finish her dream, though. She wakes up with a start when she hears a knock at her door. The knock is loud and repetitive, and Tifa thinks she must have slept through it for a few minutes. She wraps herself tightly in her blanket and finally ventures out of bed to open the door.

She takes one cautious peak around the door, but when she spots Marle’s unique, frizzy silver hairdo. It’s been so long since Tifa’s talked with Marle that she can barely contain her enthusiasm when she throws open the door completely.

“Tifa, my dear!” Marle shouts, holding her arms out and embracing Tifa tightly. “When I didn’t see you head to work I was so worried! Do you have a fever?”

“Just a little one,” Tifa says meekly. “But really, I’m fine.”

“Oh, hush,” says Marle, pulling Tifa’s blanket tighter around her body. “It’ll only get worse if you don’t take care of yourself! Can I do anything for you? Have you had breakfast?”

“I’m not that hungry,” Tifa tells her, “believe it or not.”

“Let me at least tidy up a little bit for you,” Marle insists. She steps into the apartment, squinting to see in the dimly lit space. Tifa watches her carefully as she examines the room--mostly cleaned already--and stops when she notices the extra cot in between Tifa’s bed and the bathroom. Her wrinkled face slowly morphs into one of realization as she rests her hands on her hips, turns swiftly to Tifa, and teases, “So, you’ve got a  _ guest _ ?”

“Uh, yeah,” Tifa stammers, her face hot from both the fever  _ and  _ embarrassment. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“I think I would’ve remembered,” scolds Marle playfully. “This  _ guest  _ doesn’t happen to be that guy the other tenants were telling me about yesterday, does he? The one in uniform? Big sword, blond hair… ”

Marle waits for Tifa’s response, but her eyes tell Tifa that she already  _ knows  _ what Tifa’s answer will be before she even says it. It’s pointless to hide anything from Marle anyway, so Tifa relents. “Yes. That would be him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” asks Marle. “I worry so much about you living alone, you know.”

“I guess it just… ” Tifa sighs. “I guess I just didn’t think to tell you.”

“ _ Really _ ?” Marle raises one eyebrow. “Is that because this  _ guest _ is someone special?”

Marle has this instinct, a way of deducing Tifa’s exact feelings simply from the waiver of her voice, the movement of her shoulders. Tifa’s never able to keep secrets from Marle. Perhaps it comes from many years of Marle and Tifa knowing one another; after all, Marle put a roof over Tifa’s head when she first arrived in Sector 7, and she always made herself available whenever Tifa needed to vent her frustrations. Marle looked out for Tifa, and in a lot of ways, even now, Marle gives Tifa’s life  _ stability _ that she desperately needs. And when you have the kind of relationship that Tifa has with Marle--one of family, one of trust--nothing stays hidden very long.

But Tifa doesn’t know if Marle’s right this time. Sure, Cloud is  _ special _ . But he’s only been back in Tifa’s life for a week.  _ He’s just my friend,  _ Tifa thinks, as if reassuring herself.  _ He’s a friend from back home. That’s all it is. _

So Tifa tells Marle exactly that. “It’s not like that. He’s just a friend from my hometown who needed a place to stay.”

Marle studies Tifa, her face and eyes especially. Tifa’s words haven’t convinced Marle. That’s apparent from the way Marle grins slyly, shaking her head the whole time. She doesn’t push Tifa anymore, though--she quits her prodding, saying simply, “Well, I hope this SOLDIER is going to take good care of you when he gets back. Remember what I always say: we all need to lean on someone sometimes, so make sure you’ve got someone you can trust.”

Tifa smiles. One of Marle’s “tried and true lessons for life on the ground floor,” as she so lovingly calls them. She taught Tifa many of these lessons during her first days in Sector 7--and every single one of them has been  _ tried and true _ , just like she said. With so many lessons, it’s hard for Tifa to keep them straight in her head. But at least she has Marle to remind her of them, whenever she forgets.

As she waves goodbye to Marle--who parts with one final, “Call me if you need anything at all!”--Tifa thinks about trust. What it means to trust.  _ Who  _ she trusts. Tifa finds it hard to trust; she thinks she always  _ has  _ found it hard, even before the incident. But now, she can count on one single hand the people who break down her walls. Marle. Barret. Biggs, Wedge, Jessie--to a degree, at least. And maybe  _ Cloud _ .

Because Tifa can’t deny any longer that Cloud makes her feel a certain way, something she hasn’t felt in years. Something safe, something  _ secure _ \--is that  _ trust _ , happening so fast? And how can she find herself trusting Cloud this way, when so much about him seems so  _ different  _ than how he was before?

It’s an odd situation she finds herself in, and her frustration with it all eventually lulls her back to sleep.

* * *

Tifa doesn’t wake up again until she hears Cloud open the door. The alarm clock reads  _ twelve-thirty-five.  _ Tifa thinks,  _ There goes being productive today… _

“How’d you sleep?” asks Cloud, setting down his sword and his gear.

Tifa sits up, rubbing her eyes. She yawns. “I slept okay. I  _ think  _ I’m feeling better.” It’s hard to speak properly through her grogginess.

Cloud sits on the edge of Tifa’s bed. He takes off his glove and wrist guard and puts his hand to Tifa’s forehead once more. Tifa allows it--mostly because she knows the fever will hide the flush of her cheeks, which seems to happen when Cloud touches her this way. Cloud takes his hand away and looks at Tifa with intense, electrifying eyes. “Yeah, right. Feeling better my  _ ass _ . You’re worse than before.”

Cloud moves to the sink and prepares a cold compress using one of Tifa’s towels. All the while, Tifa complains, resting her head back down on the pillow as she says, “You don’t  _ have  _ to make a big deal out of this, you know. I’ll get better on my own. I always do.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Cloud. “I know. I don’t  _ have  _ to do anything.”

Cloud returns to Tifa’s side and places the cold towel gently on Tifa’s forehead. Tifa can’t deny that it relieves the uncomfortable warmth on her face  _ immediately _ . She begins to relax her tense shoulders and sinks into the pillow. When Cloud notices the tightness in her muscles fade away, he says softly, “Better already?”

“Just a little,” admits Tifa.

“This’ll help even more.” Cloud reaches into a bag at his feet and takes out a bottle. It’s filled with some thick, slightly opaque liquid. He shakes it around, all the while Tifa crinkles her nose and hides behind the covers.

“What’s…  _ that _ ?”

“Medicine,” Cloud answers.

Tifa pouts. When Cloud looks up from the bottle and sees her, red-faced and pouting that way, his eyes soften just a little.  _ Just _ enough for Tifa to notice. He drops his tough-as-nails tone just a little, saying, “Look, this stuff  _ works _ . I know it’s nasty but… ”

Tifa nodded. Cloud hands her the bottle and spoon, and she pours herself a spoonful. The liquid is unnaturally green, viscous, and smells more of earth, of  _ grass _ , than it does of medicine. Tifa’s immediate reaction is to recoil from it, but when she does she gets a painful reminder of her fever, in the form of aches shooting up and down her spine. She can’t  _ stand  _ being sick any longer. So, in one swift motion, she sucks in her breath, holds her nose, and down the whole spoonful in one go.

“Uck!” she wretches. “What  _ is  _ that stuff?”

“Cactuar blossom juice,” Cloud says, taking the bottle back. “You’ve never heard of it?”

“It’s  _ horrible _ ,” Tifa says. “How did  _ you  _ know about it?”

Cloud slowly walks over to Tifa’s and takes a seat across from her. He leans on his knees, rubbing his hands together, and not meeting Tifa’s eyeline as he says, “It’s a SOLDIER thing. When you or someone in your squad gets sick, you can’t always take them to a doctor, right? So you gotta improvise.”

“ _ Improvise _ , huh?” asks Tifa. “So you learned all this in SOLDIER?”

It’s hard to make out Cloud’s expressions when he looks down, but Tifa thinks, just briefly, he seems disoriented. Just for a moment, he’s confused, unsure of how to answer her question properly. But he doesn’t stay that way very long. “Yeah. You learn a lot of things in SOLDIER.”

Tifa turns on her side, so she’s still laying down but she’s able to look at Cloud. From where she is, she can clearly see his face, even when he looks down and avoids her eyes. It’s strange,  _ Cloud  _ taking care of  _ her _ . All week, it’s been the opposite. Tifa’s been cautious. She’s watched Cloud, watched his movements, his mannerisms. The strange way he tenses up at certain words or phrases that must remind him of something dark in his distant past. Tifa can’t help but wonder what goes on in his head when he puts one hand to his temples, wincing in pain.  _ Did something happen to Cloud? Did it happen while he was a SOLDIER, or after…? _

But Tifa also  _ understands  _ it. Because she remembers a time when she’d see the spark of a lighter, touching the end of a cigarette, and suddenly flames as tall as buildings would surround her. Or a SOLDIER, patrolling the slums of Midgar, who would morph into a man clad in black with unique, ethereal white hair…

“Tifa?” Cloud asks, noticing her pensive staring. “You…  _ okay _ ?”

Again, that familiar flush paints her cheeks red--and this time, she can’t excuse it on her fever. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to--I zoned out is all.”

“Oh, okay.” Cloud leans forward a little, eyes now facing forward.  _ Looking  _ at Tifa, as they sometimes do, with an intense feeling Tifa can’t describe. “Uh… what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing in particular,” Tifa answers in a daze. “Just… thinking.”

“You’re acting  _ weird _ ,” Cloud tells her, shifting in his chair. “You need to get some more sleep.”

And so, as Cloud works on polishing and upgrading his sword--that blade which Tifa can picture from somewhere, though she feels she must have imagined it--Tifa turns to the wall and closes her eyes, finding that she is  _ indeed _ more tired than she realizes.

* * *

_ Tifa’s mother died on a Wednesday. Her ashes were scattered ten days later. _

_ She died of an illness. The doctors didn’t say  _ what _. They didn’t know themselves. Mako-related, they said. Something in her genetic code that made her more sensitive to the Mako in the air. Something rare, something incurable. They gave her a prognosis of a few months, but she ended up dying before that. Not that Tifa understood any of it--she was so little when her mother died, so blissfully unaware of how painful life can be. Her father let her play outside while he talked with the doctors. Tifa didn’t understand why he had tears in his eyes when they left. _

_ After that day, their house grew quiet. Tifa’s mother stayed in bed most days, too weak to get up and walk around. Most nights, she would call Tifa into her bedroom to read to her. She put on a silly voice when she read, and Tifa would only realize after she was gone that she did this to comfort Tifa. So that Tifa couldn’t tell how bad it was getting. _

_ Sometimes, while Tifa’s mother read to her, Tifa’s father would stand at the bedroom threshold. Sometimes he wouldn’t. _

_ And then, one day as Tifa put on her shoes and looked out her window and waved to the group of boys she always played with on Wednesday mornings, her father came into her room with an unreadable expression on his face. _

_ “Tifa… your mother… ” _

_ She’d passed away in her sleep. The doctors said it was  _ ideal _ \--the best way for someone like her to go. Less pain that way, they said. _

_ That’s the last thing Tifa remembers from that day. After that, she found herself in the infirmary, weak and dizzy and nauseous. A week had passed without her even knowing. She’d been in a coma, they said. “Touch and go for a while,” was the doctor’s exact words. “But lucky for us, our little sunshine Tifa Lockhart is a trooper.” _

_ When Tifa asked what happened to her, she got that same, unreadable expression from her father. He didn’t say another word. The town doctor said, “You fell from a great height. If I were you, I wouldn’t go into those mountains alone ever again.” _

_ Tifa furrowed her brow. She went into the mountains? Did no one stop her? _

_ Tifa’s mother would have had a proper memorial, much sooner, but Tifa’s stay at the hospital put things on hold. On the day it finally came, Tifa wore a black dress. She still had bandages wrapped around her head where the impact of her fall opened a deep wound.  _

_ She and her father walked hand-in-hand, surrounded by the folks from town, as they carried her ashes all the way to the mountain pass. Her father scattered them into the valley, where the dead were said to travel through on their way to whatever was beyond this world. Her father said to Tifa, “Wish your mother a safe journey.” And Tifa did. Looking back on it, Tifa thinks it’s funny; how much she believed in a folk tale. How she was  _ sure  _ her mother was really, truly walking through that valley, towards the next life. And maybe she was; Tifa felt strongly about it, and she clasped her hands together and prayed so deeply about it that she felt tears well up in her eyes. _

_ And after she prayed, she said, “Safe travels, Mama.” _

_ Afterwards, there was a lot of hugging and a lot of crying. A lot of people telling Tifa, “Everything’s gonna be fine,” and “You gotta be strong for your dad!” and “She’ll be watching over you.” She appreciated what they told her, but she couldn’t process any of their words. In that moment, it all became too real, too scary. And Tifa was numb to it all, deciding it would be better to shut the world out rather than to let just one person get too close.  _

_ Miss Strife and Cloud were there, too. But Cloud didn’t say a word to Tifa. Whenever she turned to look at him, and almost met his eyes, he’d look away. _

_ She wonders what happened to his arm--it was wrapped in fresh bandages, just like her head. _

_ Flowers were sent to the house. Cards and letters and sympathy notes came in the mail. For a long time, Tifa would get looks as she walked through town square. Looks of sorrow. Looks of comfort. _

_ But Tifa felt like she was stuck on an island without a boat. She could see the townsfolk on the other side of the bay, waving to her, throwing her life rings. And Tifa would decide, every time, not to reach for them. She’d let them float in the water and sink to the bottom, simply watching it as it fell deeper and deeper, away from her reach. She understood what they were all trying to do--that they tried to build a bridge for Tifa, so that she wouldn’t be stranded anymore. And Tifa, young and angry and scared and unable to understand, couldn’t reach out to meet them halfway. _

_ Tifa’s learned a lot since then. She wishes she could go back in time and tell her young self what she knows about loss now. That everyone she knew had lost people, too. That she only hurt herself by retreating into a hard shell, not allowing anyone around her to help. But Tifa’s changed a lot and experienced a lot. She knows it wouldn’t make a difference, even if she could talk to her former self. _

_ For months afterwards, Cloud kept his bedroom curtains shut. Tifa and Cloud shared no words, no passing looks. When she reached out, he pushed her away. When she glanced in his direction, he pretended he didn’t see. When she tried talking to him, he brushed her off. _

_ And the distance between Tifa, on her island, and the mainland got farther and farther, until she could no longer see the shore. _

* * *

Cloud returns with dinner in tow--soup for Tifa, to combat her rising temperature. The cactuar blossom juice had worked its magic, just as Cloud said it would, but it only serves to keep the aches and chills at bay. Cloud constantly, repeatedly reminds her that she must  _ rest _ . “You’re gonna feel like shit tomorrow if you don’t take care of yourself, Tifa.” She groans when he says this, teasing him, but she knows he’s right.

Cloud hands Tifa her food and takes a seat across from her at the desk to eat his. At first, Tifa only pokes at it with her spoon, unable to bring herself to eat.

“What?” asks Cloud. “All the sudden, you get picky?”

“No, I just… ” Tifa sighs deeply, keeping her eyes trained at her bowl. “I  _ hate  _ getting sick.”

“Yeah. It’d be weird if you  _ didn’t _ .”

Tifa nods slowly. She continues to poke around at her stew until she finds one, tender piece of beef and finally takes her first bite. Her thoughts make it hard for her to focus. She clears her throat and says, “It’s just, whenever I get sick, it reminds me of my mom.”

Cloud freezes, looking at Tifa with ocean blue eyes.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” Tifa admits, laughing a little. “It sounds really silly when I say it out loud. But… you know, it was so fast. It felt like… she was sick, and then she was  _ gone _ . Just like that.”

“Tifa… ”

When Tifa looks up, she notices those deep blue eyes, less intense than usually, less  _ glowing  _ than usually (or so Tifa  _ claims _ ). Cloud’s looks at her with an emotion that’s not quite pitiful. Pity feels obligatory, almost  _ forced _ . But Cloud’s look is genuine. It’s understanding. It feels  _ real _ , like he can read her mind.

Tifa doesn’t want Cloud to worry, though. So she adds, “I don’t mean that I think I’m gonna  _ die  _ or anything… I guess it just brings back bad memories is all.”

“No. I get it,” Cloud says. “My dad was sick, too. But I never really got to know him, so… guess it never really mattered much.”

“You think about him a lot?” Tifa asks.

“Not really,” Cloud admits. “He died when I was so young. Besides… everyone always told me I was more like… more like… ”

“More like your mom?” Tifa finishes.

Cloud winces, taking his head in both hands. Another headache. When she realizes what’s happening, Tifa hurriedly starts to rise from her place on the bed. But she only gets halfway up when Cloud puts one hand up, palm out. Tifa freezes and waits for him to collect himself. When he finally does, he straightens his back against the chair, takes a deep sigh, and trains his eyes to his shoes.

“Sorry,” says Cloud. “Rather not talk about it anymore.”

Tifa nods. “Understood.”

“Actually--” Cloud looks back up, eyes back to their usual, bluish-greenish hue, glowing from the inside. “Meant to tell you something before. A few nights ago. You’ve gotten really tough.”

Tifa raises her eyebrows, stifling a cough in surprise. “ _ Really _ ?”

“Yeah. I’m impressed.”

“Good to know all my hard work paid off,” Tifa says slyly. “I trained for  _ years  _ with Zangan.”

Cloud nods. “Yeah. I remember him.”

Tifa cocks her head, eyebrows raised even higher now.  _ Cloud met Zangan? When?  _ Tifa’s eyes move downward, slightly closed. She didn’t meet Zangan until after Cloud left the village; she’s sure of it, because she remembers the day he ventured into town, clad in strange clothes made somewhere far away from Tifa’s little village, looking for a student.

She blinks a few times.  _ It’s an honest mistake. Cloud must be thinking of someone else _ . She doesn’t bother asking him more questions.

“You know, that reminds  _ me  _ of something,” Tifa says, smiling coyly.

“Yeah?” Cloud asks, sitting back with his arms crossed. “What?”

“Your form, when you’re fighting,” Tifa says. She crinkles her nose. “Who  _ taught  _ you that?”

Cloud tilts his head, sensing the challenge in Tifa’s tone. “What’s  _ that  _ supposed to mean?” She notices the slightest uptilt in at the corners of his mouth, the beginnings of a smirk.

“It’s…  _ alright _ ,” she tells him. “You’ll get by. But someone should have told you to plant your back foot. Don’t they teach that to SOLDIERs?”

“Why?” Cloud leans forward, closer to Tifa. Now that smirk comes in full force, along with one eyebrow raised in interest. “Think  _ you _ can teach me better?”

“I wouldn’t mind sparring with you for a few rounds. To show you how it’s done.”

“Sounds like a challenge.”

“ _ Lesson _ ,” Tifa corrects.

“I’ll take you up on it,” Cloud says. “ _ After  _ you start feeling better. No sparring for you while you’re sick. Promise?”

There’s that word again.  _ Promise _ . It holds a lot of weight for Tifa. It transports her every time she hears it, to a different time and place. She wonders if it holds that same power for Cloud. He says it often enough. And every time he says it, Tifa  _ swears  _ she sees a change in him. A softness, characteristic of a side of him that she doesn’t always get to see. And his eyes--they always seem to turn that familiar ocean blue, whenever he says that word. Often it’s a subtle change that happens to his eyes, something that Tifa can’t even pin down, because she convinces herself it’s all in her head. But not when he says that word. She’s  _ positive _ they’re different when he says that word.

Tifa takes a long, deep breath. “Okay. Promise.”

  
In the morning, Tifa feels better. Of course, Cloud doesn’t immediately believe her, but one check of her temperature tells Cloud that her fever has surely subsided. Tifa smiles to herself all morning while she gets ready to head to the bar.  _ Cactuar blossom juice, huh?  _ she thinks as she brushes out her hair.  _ Never would have thought…  _


	8. trust

* * *

Tifa pauses and takes one, long breath in, before she approaches Barret, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie at the end of the bar.

Tifa’s put off telling them her decision about Avalanche for almost two weeks now. Every time it came up in conversation, Tifa would change the subject, or conveniently find a way to get distracted until they’d gone on talking about other things. She couldn’t as masterfully escape  _ Barret’s  _ questions; but when he did ask, she’d stammer through an apology, unable to give him a straight answer because she  _ herself  _ didn’t know it. And he wouldn’t push her any further. He’d simply remind her, “Once you make your choice, there’s no gettin’ off of that train.”

Tifa’s never been good at making tough decisions. She’ll wrack her brain for days, weeks, months, sometimes letting life move by her while she’s stuck on something small, yet impassable, completely preventing her from moving forward.

But not now. Not anymore.  _ This  _ time, she’s made her choice.

“Hey, guys?” Tifa slings the bar rag over her shoulder as she approaches them. They speak to one another in harsh whispers, but they all completely stop when Tifa comes close. “Can we talk?”

“Sure we can,” Barret answers. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Everything’s fine,” Tifa assures them. “I finally figured out what I wanna do--about Avalanche.”

Now she captures their attention. Biggs leans closer to her on the counter; Jessie hurriedly jumps onto a barstool, propping her head up on her elbows. Wedge, halfway through a steak that Tifa prepared, slows his eating mid-bite.

Barret, eyebrows raised, asks, “So, what do ya’ say?”

Tifa pauses once more, right before she gives them her answers. There’s a brief moment where Tifa wonders if she’s made the right choice. Her mind, always reeling, tries to convince her that she’s not ready--not  _ yet _ . That she should think it over another day, another week, another month. That this decision can’t be made overnight. But she shakes this thought from her head. She’s already waited too long. She can’t deny the feeling in her gut that seems to tell her she must act  _ now _ . It ambushes her whenever she passes by that ad in front of the train station. It taunts her. “ _ Shinra Power and Electric. We’ll light your way home. _ ” __ It stings even now, as Tifa remembers it in her head.  _ Light your way home, my ass. _

“I say,” Tifa says slowly, “I’m in.”

“ _ Yes _ !” Biggs slams his fist down on the countertop, slapping his other hand on Barret’s back. “See? What did Barret and I tell you guys?”

Jessie smirks. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out her wallet, slamming one hundred gil onto the bar with a loud clap. Biggs scoops up the money and pockets it. “Okay, fine, you win! Never thought I’d be  _ happy  _ to lose a hundred gil.”

Tifa furrows her brow, crossing her arms over her chest. “Wait, you guys  _ bet  _ on this?”

“Told ‘em it was stupid,” Barret tells her, shaking his head. “But you know  _ these _ assholes.”

“Sorry, Tifa,” Wedge says. He finally finishes that bite of steak he’s been holding onto, and through his chewing he manages to tell her, “When you didn’t give us an answer, we started thinkin’ maybe you thought we were  _ crazy _ .”

“I  _ always  _ thought you’d come around,” says Jessie with a wink. “But I also figured, if you  _ didn’t _ , at least I’d make some money out of it.”

“Are you mad?” asks Wedge. “Because you get  _ scary  _ when you’re mad.”

Tifa smiles, even letting herself laugh a little. Truthfully, she can’t be mad at them--not when they so lovingly joke around, making her feel so welcome. Like she’s  _ always  _ been one of them. Even when Biggs and Jessie and Wedge first started coming around the bar, talking about Avalanche and celebrating little victories over beers, she remembers that they wouldn’t leave her out. “ _ Come have a beer with us, Tifa! _ ” she remembers Jessie saying, holding up her bottle like a sword. “ _ We can drink these losers under the table! _ ”

She shakes her head, assuring Wedge, “It takes a lot more than a little bet to get me mad.”

“Tifa,” Barret says, maintaining his serious tone but smiling through his words. “I never doubted ya’ for a  _ second _ . We’re lucky we got you. Always have been.”

But Barret’s smile leaves his face soon after. He leans in close, motioning for the other Avalanche members to follow his lead. He says, “Now that Tifa’s one of us, I gotta tell you all somethin’ really important. Could be nothin’, but I’m not takin’ any chances.” Barret glances at the door once, moving his gun arm slightly to ready it in case an unwanted guest comes barging in. But when nothing happens, he turns his attention back toward Tifa, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, who wait for his words with baited breath. 

He continues. “Been hearin’ rumors around the slums that we got a  _ uniform  _ here.”

Tifa feels her heart drop into her stomach.

“A  _ uniform _ ?” she stammers. “What else do they say?”

“They’re sayin’ he works for Wymer,” Barret tells her. “And that he’s got a sword on his back as tall as he is.”

“That’s not just any old Shinra guard,” says Biggs. “That’s a SOLDIER.”

“Oh,  _ shit _ ,” Wedge says, mouth agape. “You think he’s after  _ us _ ?”

“Can’t say for sure,” Barret says, drumming his fingers on the counter. “But ya’ know what? I say we track his ass down and--”

“ _ Wait _ .”

Tifa’s strangled tone catches the attention of everyone seated around her, and their eyes immediately turn in her direction, waiting just as she instructed them. Tifa’s cheeks burn bright red. He heart pounds in her ribcage. She should have just  _ told them _ \--that’s what she scolds herself for anyway, because if she had just said something sooner, maybe she wouldn’t be where she finds herself  _ now _ . Having to explain to Barret and the rest of Avalanche why she’s been hiding an ex-SOLDIER in her apartment.

But that’s the bed Tifa’s made for herself. And now she knows she’s gotta lie in it.

“About that SOLDIER,” Tifa continues. “I know him.”

“You  _ know _ him?” Jessie asks.

Tifa nods. “Yeah. When you described him--that’s when I realized who you were talking about. That’s my friend Cloud. He’s not a SOLDIER--he  _ was  _ one, a long time ago. But he’s a merc now. And he’s… he’s been living with me.”

“ _ Living _ with you?” Now it’s Barret, a scowl plainly showing on his face and his overprotective nature coming out in full force, who speaks in disbelief. “You’ve been  _ living  _ with this guy?”

“Just while he gets on his feet here in Midgar,” Tifa explains.

“ _ Tifa _ ? Living with a  _ guy _ ?” Jessie’s devious smile appears, and she rises out of her chair a little to lean further across the bar. “Tell me  _ everything _ !”

“I-It’s not like that… ” Tifa puts her hands in the air in defense. “He’s just a… childhood friend. We grew up together.”

But this does nothing to quell Jessie’s intrigue; if anything, it feeds the fire. “You  _ hesitated _ !” she shouts gleefully. “I think there’s something going on with this SOLDIER guy that Tifa’s not telling us!”

“No,  _ really _ ,” Tifa insists. “It’s not like that.”

“ _ Guys _ ,” Barret says sternly, slamming his balled fist down on the counter and ceasing the chattering group. He still frowns, although less intensely than before. “Quit screwin’ around.”

Tifa sighs in relief, though she tries to keep it inside.

“Tifa,” Barret says, completely stone-faced and without inflection, “can ya’ trust this…  _ ex _ - _ SOLDIER _ ?” The word comes out with a bitterness that’s almost instinctual. “I mean, can you  _ really  _ trust him?”

Tifa nods. “Yes.” She doesn’t hesitate at all.

* * *

It’s a long night, but when Tifa finally returns to the apartment, Cloud is there. He must have been there a while because he already showered and changed out of his uniform. He sits on the edge of his cot and clutches his midsection over his white shirt, face contorted in pain. He only acknowledges Tifa when she walks in by looking up slightly and saying a strained, “Hey.”

“Cloud? Are you okay?” Tifa asks, shutting the door behind her.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he nods. “Just those damn doomrats in the junkyard. Got me when I wasn’t looking.” He lifts his hand a little, just enough for Tifa to see the blood that stains his shirt, red against pale white. She can’t stop the gasp from escaping her lips, and in response Cloud looks up and reassures her with a weak, “It looks worse than it is.”

Tifa shakes her head. “Even so. That’ll get infected if you don’t treat it right away.” She sets down her things at the door and rushes to the cabinet beneath the sink, where she retrieves her first aid kit and a rag. As she wets the rag with soap and water at the sink, she tells Cloud, “Doomrats are gross. I’m surprised Wymer didn’t warn you.”

“He might’ve said something,” Cloud says. “I wasn’t paying attention. Tifa, there’s no need to get worked up-- _ really _ , I’m fine.”

“Well, better safe than sorry, right?”

Tifa returns with the damp rag and the first aid kit, throwing it open on her bed. Cloud sits up slowly, as to not agitate his wound, removes his bloodstained shirt and discards it on the floor. When she notices him move, she glances in his direction. On his right side, starting at the hip and going all the way up his ribs, is a deep and ragged cut, open and bleeding, though not  _ nearly  _ as badly as Tifa thought originally. At first, she can’t help but turn red and look away quickly, not having expected to see Cloud this  _ intimately _ . She already knew he’d gotten tougher since leaving Midgar by his broad shoulders and strong arms. Now, seeing so much of him, the changes are clear as day.

But it’s not Cloud’s muscles that draw Tifa’s attention back to his chest, nor is it the open wound below it. It’s a scar, undoubtedly familiar to Tifa, on the center of his chest, six inches long. And when he turns around, Tifa sees the same exact scar mirrored on his back.

_ That looks just like… _

Tifa habitually reaches her own hand to her chest, where the scar constantly reminds her of that day. That man. That  _ blade _ .

Tifa shakes her head.  _ No. That’s impossible. It’s just in your head--any sword could have made that scar.  _

Cloud makes room for Tifa to sit next to him on the edge of the cot. She follows his lead, sitting beside him, and putting the rag, gauze, and some adhesive strips beside her. She takes the rag first and presses it to Cloud’s wound, cleaning the blood away. When he recoils slightly, she asks softly, “Did that hurt?”

“Just a little,” Cloud answers. “I’m good.”

Tifa tries not to think about how close she and Cloud are to one another--or else she’ll fall victim to that flush that always reveals  _ exactly  _ what Tifa’s thinking. So she works diligently on cleaning the cut, only pausing briefly to ask, “So what happened exactly?”

“You know the guy who owns the item store?”

Tifa nods. “Yeah, he’s a friend. He’s the one that gave you the job?”

“Yeah,” Cloud says, nodding. He shifts uncomfortably when Tifa applies too much pressure with the rag, and relaxes when she takes it away in response. “Said that  _ doomrats  _ were eating some of his stock. Told me where I could find them. Wish he would’ve told me how  _ many  _ there’d be.”

“Doomrats move in packs,” Tifa says, recalling a time when Marle, frustrated with those pesky creatures gnawing holes in the pipes, asked Tifa to take care of them. She’d been shocked to find five of them huddled together over some dead creature. All of them were mangy, covered in matted fur, and standing at around three feet tall. Shuddering, she adds, “They’re big and gross, too.”

“Yeah, I figured that out today.”

“So how’d  _ this  _ happen?” Tifa’s eyes are trained on Cloud’s cut, now clean and ready for gauze. “One of them caught you off guard?”

Cloud nods again. “There were seven of ‘em at the junkyard. I managed to kill four, but the fifth one tripped me up. Then another came outta nowhere and--” He gestures to the cut in resignation-- “ _ that  _ happened.”

“You know,” Tifa says playfully, “it’s because you don’t plant your feet.”

Cloud laughs a little. “I  _ knew  _ you were gonna say that.”

“It’s true!” Tifa chides. “Maybe tomorrow before the dinner rush, you and I can spar at Seventh Heaven. We’ve got a mat in the basement. And that way we could work on that  _ technique  _ of yours.”

Cloud nods. “We’ll see.”

Tifa finishes wrapping the wound in gauze and tapes it up. Her hand lingers. She looks up, slowly, and her red eyes meet Cloud’s blue, mere inches away. Tifa can feel the heat rush to her cheeks, but she doesn’t turn away like she usually does. His gaze holds her there, comfortably, and she thinks it could hold her forever. She barely manages to form a cohesive sentence, but what comes out is soft and low. “Better. Right?”

Cloud nods, matching her tone. “Much better.”

They sit there frozen for a moment that feels like an eternity. But eventually, Tifa breaks away first, snapping out of her trance. She slowly rises and paces the room, finally settling up against the wall so she’s facing Cloud. 

There’s so much she wants to tell him, at this moment in time. But only one thought sits at the forefront of her mind, as her eyes study him from afar and settle onto that long, pale scar of his. She shudders once more, thinking about her own scar. It’s strange after all the years to see that Cloud has that very same scar, in the very same place. She wants more than anything to ask him about it. Where he got it.  _ How  _ he got it, and who he got it from.

But no. She can’t. She’s seen him clutch his head in his hands enough times. She’s seen him wake up from a nightmare, in a cold sweat, unsure of where he is. She’s seen him stare at nothing in particular, unable to be brought back to reality by the sound of Tifa’s voice calling to him. She can’t imagine what happens in his head, but she doesn’t think it can be anything good if it hurts so much. And to be the  _ cause  _ of that pain… 

So Tifa decides to change the subject, to something much more innocuous. “You know,” she says, tapping her foot on the concrete floor, “you sounded a lot like me, at first.”

“When?”

“When you told me I didn’t need to get worked up.” She looks down so Cloud can’t see her expression, a wistful smile. “It’s a bad habit, you know. To think you need to go through life on your own.”

“Yeah? Then what’s  _ your _ excuse?”

“Don’t have one,” Tifa says, shaking her head. “That’s why I’m trying to be better. Marle--the landlady--she’s always saying, ‘We all need to lean on someone sometimes, so make sure you’ve got someone you can trust.’”

His eyes move in thought, as if he’s repeating those words over and over in his head. He asks Tifa, “Do you believe that?”

“Marle knows better than anyone how to live a happy life here, in the slums,” Tifa answers. “I didn’t believe it at first, but… now I know better than to doubt her.”

Cloud nods slowly, finally getting up himself to retrieve a fresh shirt and put it on. “I guess I’ll have to remember that then,” he tells her. “For next time.”

“You  _ better _ .”

* * *

_ The first night Tifa stayed in her apartment was also the first night she met Marle. _

_ Barret and little Marlene--just a baby back then, and just learning to laugh--stayed with a friend while Barret and Tifa worked tirelessly to clean up that empty annex. That friend, Biggs, had offered Tifa a couch to sleep on, but she declined. She played it cool, telling Barret and Biggs, “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.” But really, she didn’t have any idea where she’d stay while she was in Sector 7; she just couldn’t bear to burden anyone anymore than she already had. _

_ Besides, Tifa liked to keep her cards close to the vest, especially in those days. Getting close to people meant getting hurt by them. Or getting hurt by  _ losing  _ them. _

_ Still, the cold ground underneath the streetlamps of the Sector 7 station didn’t provide Tifa much comfort. Not that she would ever admit that to Barret. He’d buy her breakfast most mornings, despite Tifa’s constant protests. “You don’t have much gil either,” Tifa would lecture. “You gotta worry about  _ yourself _.” But Barret wouldn’t listen, responding the same way each morning. “I am  _ not  _ letting you haul lumber on an empty stomach.” And Tifa supposed that she was thankful. But that was where she drew the line. Accepting more help from Barret meant letting him in. It meant  _ trusting  _ him. And she wasn’t there yet. _

_ So she slept at the station for seven nights. And on the eighth, just before sundown, a figure with a kind, weathered face and silver hair approached Tifa, and offered her a play to stay. _

_ “I can guarantee it’s more comfortable than the floor,” the woman told her. _

_ “I’m good,” Tifa answered her. “Thanks.” _

_ “You’re the girl I see lugging all that junk to the old annex, right?” the woman continues to prod. “I can’t very well leave you out here in the cold. I’m not renting the place out to anyone now  _ anyway _ , so if you don’t stay there it’ll just be empty!” _

_ Tifa obliged then--mostly, because she didn’t think she could take one more chilly February night without a roof over her head. She’d been through too many of them over the past year and a half already. _

_ All the way to the two-story building at the back of the sector, just a few blocks away from the annex that Barret bought, Marle talked and Tifa didn’t say a word. She didn’t have anything to say to Marle--and she’d said thank you at the station. Tifa owed her only that, and nothing else. But Tifa’s lack of response didn’t deter Marle. She tells Tifa, “Oh, I know Sector 7 isn’t flashy or pretty like the upper plate--but the people here! Oh, they are the best kind of people. People you can count on. I know it’s hard to believe, just moving in. But you’ll find out soon enough that in Sector 7, we look out for each other.” _

_ As they passed little ramshackle buildings, Marle would point to them and explain them to Tifa, who would only pay them a brief glance before training her eyes back to the floor, frowning. “This is the grocer if you’d like to get something to eat… the diner, too. There’s the weapon shop, and above it is the Neighborhood Watch. Run by some local boys. Oh, and here we are! My building--Stargazer Heights.” _

_ Stargazer Heights stood out against the darker buildings around it, lit by old fluorescent lights outside each apartment door. On the top floor were four red doors in a line; on the bottom were four blue doors, placed roughly the same distance apart. The building’s concrete and rusted metal exterior  _ should  _ have felt unwelcoming, uninviting. And yet Marle had strung warm lights across the second story walkway and displayed little potted plants all over the bannisters, creating a warmth that other buildings in the sector couldn’t replicate. _

_ Tifa sighed when she saw it. It didn’t feel quite like home, even with all of Marle’s little finishing touches. Back in those days, nothing in Midgar felt like home for Tifa. _

_ Marle led her upstairs and into the first room. 201. The floors were concrete and bare with matching walls. The window on the back wall looked down at the darkened Scrap Boulevard behind the building. The room came with a shower and a toilet, a sink and a bed, and nothing else. _

_ Tifa placed her bag and what little is in it on the bed and sat down, looking around the room. Marle stood at the threshold. _

_ “I know, I know. Not exactly comfortable. But it’s yours as long as no one rents it.” Marle leaned against one side of the doorway. “If you need anything, I’ll be right downstairs. Just give me a holler, okay?” _

_ Tifa nodded. “Okay.” _

_ “Well,” Marle said, perking her head up. “That’s the first word you’ve said since we left the station.” _

_Tifa shifted her shoulders uncomfortably, not sure what to say. If she told Marle too much, she’d let her in, and Tifa couldn’t have that. If she said too little, maybe Marle would resent her. And Tifa couldn’t very well have_ that _,_ _either. Tifa’s heart pulled her two different ways. The path she gravitated toward was the path of politeness, of kindness; but experience had shown her time and time again that kindness couldn’t solve anything. Kindness couldn’t bring the people she loved back to her. Kindness couldn’t put a roof over her head and food on her plate._

_ So she played the same game she always played. She built her wall. She didn’t allow Marle to look inside. Tifa spat, “What do you expect me to say? I already said thanks.” _

_ Marle walked closer, arms crossed in front of her chest and face stern. Not cold, not angry--just  _ stern _ , and Tifa furrowed her eyebrows and deepened her scowl in response. “You know,” Marle said flatly, “I’ve met kids like you before.” _

_ “What’s that supposed to mean?” _

_ “You kids come to this town because you’ve got nowhere else to go,” Marle continues, shaking her head. “The world’s been unfair to you, so you think, ‘Why bother’. Isn’t that right?” _

_ Tifa didn’t say anything in reply. _

_ “You think that you’re the only person in the world who’s gotten hurt, and you think no one can  _ possibly  _ understand it. So you go through life thinking everyone else is the enemy because no one can help you. Is that it?” _

_ Tifa shook her head. But she couldn’t dispute Marle with words. _

_ “You know how you beat it?” Marle asked, her voice softening. “You know how you beat the world that’s been so unfair to you? You don’t let it make you cold. That’s exactly what it wants from you--to make you cold. So you fight it by being kind. You fight it by letting people in.” She sat on the bed, leaving a good space between her and Tifa, but Tifa still moved a little further away out of habit. Marle let her. She continues, “I’ve lived in the slums for a long time. And when you’ve been here as long as I have, the slums start to teach you lessons.” _

_ “Really?” Tifa said. _

_ “I’ll teach you the first one,” Marle said. “Lesson 1: we all need to lean on someone sometimes, so make sure you’ve got someone you can trust.” _

_ Tifa looked down at her ragged shoes. _

_ “What do you think’s gonna happen,” asked Marle, “if you go your whole life, not trusting anyone?” _

_ Tifa shook her head. “I don’t know.” _

_ Marle stood up, brushed the wrinkles out of her dress, and headed for the door. Before she left, she turned around to face Tifa once more, her face clean of its sternness and replaced with softness. She said, more gently this time, “If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs. Even if you just need an ear to listen. Got it?” _

_ Tifa nodded. “Got it.” _

_ “You might find,” Marle told her as she stepped outside the apartment, closing the door behind her, “that I have a lot to say. You’re just like me when I first got here--and it took me far too long to figure it all out. Goodnight.” _

_ And just like that, Marle was gone. _

_ Tifa laid on the bed and stared at the concrete wall, thinking about what Marle said. Tifa was so focused on surviving that she forgot about living. In the year and a half she’d spent in Midgar, she made no friends. She fended for herself and herself  _ only _. She didn’t want to rely on anyone, and she didn’t want anyone to rely on her. It was simpler, that way. Less loose ends to tie up that way. Less vulnerability, less weakness. _

_ But she could feel her heart ache. When she first met little Marlene and watched the baby as she reached up with her tiny hands to grab a rattle, it took all of Tifa’s willpower to stay stone-faced. When Barret cracked jokes to her while having breakfast, she forced herself to stifle her laughter. She thought, if she put up her barriers, she wouldn’t feel bad when they eventually left her. But that dull ache in her heart, longing to connect with  _ someone _ , told her that Marle was right. She could deny it no longer. The natural pull that drew Tifa to others--it had been there, neglected, the whole time. And each passing day she ignored it, it gnawed a hole in her chest. _

_ But could she become soft again? Could she learn to trust the people who brought her joy in this dreary town? Could she find a home in this place, even if she looked for it tirelessly? _

No _ , Tifa thought to herself,  _ I have to find it. I’m done feeling sorry for myself.

_ She slept soundly that night, in a warm bed, for the first time in months. And in her dreams, that starry sky she loved so much watched over a new place. Sector 7. _

_ Yes. She could see it as her home now. _

_ The next morning, she waved to Marle, who shot back a pleasantly surprised glance. She asked Barret if she could hold Marlene and smiled down at the little girl as she cooed back, shaking her rattle in her tiny hands. At breakfast, Biggs and Barret made jokes, and Tifa allowed herself to laugh. She’d almost forgotten what it was like, to laugh like that. So sincerely. So genuinely. Barret told her afterwards, “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile this much since I met ya’.” _

_ It took a long time, but that cold exterior melted away. And Tifa became herself. Not simply a survivor anymore, but someone determined to live a happy life, against all odds. _

_ And she supposed she had Marle to thank for that. Marle and Barret. Little Marlene. Biggs and Wedge and Jessie. Everyone who reminded her what it felt like to fall and know someone would catch you. _

* * *

“Okay. When you fight, stance is  _ everything _ .”

Tifa and Cloud stand across from one another in the basement of Seventh Heaven. Cloud has removed his sword and utility belt, which sit in a corner next to Jessie’s work station, and wears protective gear he’s borrowed from Biggs’s desk. The outline of fresh bandages around his midsection and underneath his shirt is visible to Tifa, who makes a note to avoid hitting Cloud on his right side and opening his cut again. Tifa dons her full set of gear--gloves, leggings, knee and elbow braces. Her hair is tied behind her in a ponytail, as many stray hairs as she could gather in bobby pins to keep them out of her face. 

“Okay, tell me again,” Cloud says, sighing, stretching his back out, “why I’m  _ not  _ using my sword.”

“If you can’t get your  _ technique  _ right,” Tifa reminds him with a smile, “then you’ll never stand a chance--even  _ with _ your sword.”

Cloud cocks his head.

“Think of your sword,” Tifa explains, “as an extension of your body.” She remembers the many days and nights she’d train with Zangan, using a bo. Zangan would always yell the same thing each time he would knock Tifa from her feet--words she repeats to Cloud now. “ _ Whatever movements you make with the sword, start with the body. _ That’s why stance is key.”

Cloud nods. He watches Tifa carefully as she assumes a fighting stance. Her toes are planted firmly against the mat, heels lifted slightly, and spread shoulder-width apart. One shoulder--her weaker shoulder--moves backwards, as her stronger shoulder and arm come to the front. Her dominant arm extends out while her other falls behind, close to the body, to protect her from an attacker who gets too close.

“See what I’m doing?” Tifa asks Cloud. “You wanna dig in with your feet--but don’t keep them flat. Keep one arm tight and the other comes out, like this. Head low, chin up.  _ Never _ leave your face unguarded. Got all that?”

“Yeah. I  _ think _ .” Cloud falls into  _ his  _ fighting stance. Legs spread apart, just a little beyond shoulder-width. Feet planted firmly, heels up. Arms up, with one tucked slightly in as a last defense.

Tifa studies him closely. “Well… it’s  _ almost  _ perfect.” She approaches him. With one cautious hand, she pulls his shoulder back, just a little. She tries to ignore the electricity that she feels in her fingers when they brush up against Cloud.  _ Focus, Tifa.  _ “Your back shoulder is too loose. Keep it tight--but don’t get  _ too  _ tense. Okay?”

“So… like this?” Cloud adjusts.

Tifa nods. “ _ Much _ better.” She returns to her place across from him on the mat. “Okay, now that you have your stance down, it’s time to spar.”

“Yeah, about that… ” Cloud straightens out, looking at Tifa with concerned eyes. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? The Mako, it… made me pretty strong. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

Tifa smiles slyly. “I’m positive. You said it yourself, remember? I’m pretty tough.”

Cloud nods, the slightest smirk painted across his face. “I  _ did  _ say that.”

“You better not hold back, okay? I’ll  _ know _ .” She flashes back to Zangan again, saying these exact words to her. That day, they trained in the rain, and Tifa kept losing her footing in the soggy grass. Zangan had said, “ _ It’s because you’re afraid to hurt me. You can’t be afraid. I’m your opponent--and I won’t hold back. Come at me with everything you’ve got or you’ll lose. _ ” Tifa supposes it’s poetic; after so many years of training, so many years of fighting, now  _ she  _ gets to be the teacher.

“Got it, coach,” Cloud says.

On Tifa’s count, Cloud and Tifa close the gap between them. Tifa guards and allows Cloud to throw the first punch. When he does, Tifa easily dodges it. Without lowering her guard, she tells him, “What did I say? No pulling your punches” Cloud looks at her with pleading eyes, only to meet her stern ones. His expression changes to one more serious and he returns to his stance, ready to throw another punch.

This time, Cloud doesn’t hold back. He swings  _ hard _ , and Tifa almost can’t avoid it. She narrowly misses it, feeling his arm brush the top of her head. She grabs his forearm with both hands and redirects it, forcing Cloud to change direction and allowing her to escape from his line of fire. When he turns around, she puts distance between them again.

“There you go!” she encourages, studying his pose to predict his next move. “You almost got me!”

“Damn,” he says back, “you’re  _ fast _ .”

Like a dance, Cloud and Tifa both step forward again, coming closer to one another. This time, Tifa spots a weakness: Cloud’s front foot, not planted in front of him. He lets her take the first swing and grabs her wrist. He holds her in an iron grip, and Tifa knows she won’t be able to wriggle free.  _ He wasn’t kidding about being strong.  _ Still, Tifa doesn’t panic. She glances down just for a second at his left foot, shifting her body around to hook her own leg behind it. In one swift motion, she pulls back. Cloud loses his footing and Tifa pins him down, her knee on his chest and hand on his wrist.

“I thought I had you,” Cloud says breathlessly, as he taps the mat.

Tifa releases him, allowing him to sit up. “You gotta remember to plant your feet,” she reminds him with a grin, “or you’ll  _ never  _ pin me.”

“Oh yeah? Is that a challenge?”

“Only if it’ll get you to do it right. Plant. Your.  _ Feet _ .”

They both scramble up from the floor and reassume their positions. This time, Cloud keeps his form perfectly. Tifa analyzes him for a weak point but can’t find one.  _ He’s definitely getting better _ , she thinks.  _ But can he maintain it?  _

Cloud strikes first. He grabs Tifa’s forearm in his strong hand, but she twists out of it, sidestepping and maintaining her balance. Tifa throws a punch but Cloud blocks with his elbow. Involuntarily, Tifa winces for a split second, though she holds her stance. She hadn’t expected Cloud’s block to come with so much force--though, he  _ had  _ warned her. Cloud notices her pained expression and his face softens, worried. “You okay?” he asks. “Wanna call it?”

Tifa shakes her head. “No. I can take it. The round isn’t over until someone gets pinned or forfeits.”

Though unsure and still concerned, ocean blue eyes unwavering, Cloud nods. He strikes again--it’s sloppy this time--and Tifa easily dodges it. When she swings at him, it lands, right in the center of his chest. Her punch pushes him backwards but he doesn’t waver.

_ He’s getting better _ , Tifa thinks, noting his stance.  _ He’s able to recover much more quickly now. I might have to step it up a little.  _ In a real fight, one punch from Tifa would send her opponent flying, but now she’s been purposefully holding back--not her drive to win each round, but her strength. This fight isn’t about power; it’s about skill. Cloud’s power alone puts him at an advantage in any fight,; but without that skill, he’ll always make the same mistakes.

So Tifa adjusts her back. She takes the initiative and strikes Cloud; he blocks, but the force of her punch makes him stagger once. He recovers, eyes bewildered and mouth teasing a smile. “Were  _ you  _ holding out on  _ me _ , Tifa?”

“Just a little,” Tifa says. “But not anymore, now that you’ve got the hang of it.”

Tifa throws another punch; it lands, but Cloud braces himself and absorbs the blow. He retaliates but Tifa blocks with her weak elbow. She finds herself caught in a tough spot, so she ducks, rolling away from Cloud before he can grab her. She quickly regains her footing. Another lunge from Cloud, another dodge from Tifa. Tifa strikes back but Cloud sidesteps her, and her punch merely grazes him. He takes her arm in his hand and changes her direction, as she’d done to him, and she overshoots. She’s able to recover quickly, but the gap between them has increased once more.

Tifa’s attacks become more aggressive, more confident. She hits Cloud with enough force to bruise, but he takes it once more, managing to move his forearm into her line of fire before she can compensate. Cloud attacks her more desperately in response, but he misses, allowing Tifa to grab his arm and hold it behind him. He barely manages to break free from her grip and put space between her and him.

“Okay,” he says, “enough screwing around.”

At the same time, Cloud and Tifa both lash out, and both block one another’s punches. The gap between them is now completely closed. Before Tifa can react, Cloud shifts around her, grabbing one wrist and hooking his leg around hers. Unable to maneuver away, she’s forced onto the mat.

Tifa doesn’t have time to scramble to her feet again. Cloud pins her, knees on either side of her hips and hands keeping both her wrists still against the floor.

“Give up yet?” Cloud asks, panting.

Tifa doesn’t say anything. 

It dawns on her that Cloud’s face is only inches from hers, their heaving chests nearly touching. A heat moves from Tifa’s cheeks all the way down her neck. From Cloud’s eyes, which shift from that bright Mako turquoise to a softer, more muted deep blue, Tifa can see he’s realized it, too. She expects him to pull away, to put distance between them, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says breathlessly, “Like this?” And Tifa suspects he isn’t simply talking about their fight.

She doesn’t know how to respond, so she replies, just as breathlessly, “Yeah.” She can’t tell whether  _ she’s  _ talking about their fight, either.

Tifa feels Cloud’s grip on her left wrist soften. He moves his hand down her arm, her side, finally settling on her waist--fingers gently running against her skin the whole time, never retreating away from her. At his touch she feels a shock run through her veins, making her heart pound against her chest.

Cloud studies her face, swallowing hard. His grip on her waist, which was gentle at first, tightens. 

Tifa knows she can tap out. She knows she can break free. But she doesn’t want to--she wants to see what Cloud does next.

Unfortunately, at the sound of Barret’s voice on the floor above them calling out “ _ Tifa! Are you here? _ ” Cloud releases Tifa from his hold. He slowly gets up, and after Tifa has a moment to collect her thoughts and wash the intense flush away from her face, he offers her a hand so she can pull herself to her feet.

“Barret?” Tifa calls back. “I’m in the basement!”

The whirring of machinery tells Tifa that Barret’s taking the elevator down to see her. Cloud walks over to the corner where he discarded his things and redresses, equipping his sword. Tifa can’t help but glance in his direction, still feeling heat where his fingers left trails on her side.  _ What was that all about?  _ she thinks.  _ Was that all in my head, or was Cloud… ? _

Barret appears from the roof, using his good hand to hold onto the pinball machine while it descends. When he spots Tifa, he yells to her, “Hey! Been lookin’ all over for you! Where have you… ” His voice trails off when his eyes, obscured by his dark sunglasses, wander in Cloud’s direction, then to Cloud--who’s dressed in uniform, arms folded across his chest, eyes locked on Barret with habitual distrust.

“Tifa,” Barret says slowly, measuredly, as if trying not to lose his temper, “what’s the  _ uniform  _ doin’ in our bar?”

“Barret, don’t you remember?” Tifa walks over to Cloud and gestures at him. “This is my friend Cloud. He’s been staying with me.”

Barret steps closer. Side by side, Barret  _ towers  _ over Cloud, but Cloud doesn’t flinch. Tifa takes a few steps back when she feels the tension between them, which immediately creates a pressure in the room. Barret slowly takes his sunglasses off, examines Cloud head to toe, and finally says with a bitter laugh, “So, this is the SOLDIER boy merc everyone in town’s been talkin’ about! Not much of a SOLDIER if ya’ ask me.”

Cloud narrows his eyes. “ _ Ex _ -SOLDIER.”

“Nah. I don’t buy it.” Barret taps his gun to his leg, scowling down at Cloud whose face hasn’t changed at all. “Bein’ a SOLDIER is in your blood now. Nothing’s ever gonna change that, if ya’ ask me.”

“I didn’t ask,” Cloud deadpans.

“Got an attitude, huh?” Barret mocks, sizing Cloud up. “So then what made you quit,  _ ex _ -SOLDIER boy? Not gettin’ paid enough? Or did ya’ finally realize what those evil bastards have done to the Planet?”

“Neither,” Cloud says. “Don’t think I need to tell you my reasons.”

“I got a right to worry,” Barret says, face transforming into a grimace, “when I hear you’ve been stayin’ with Tifa.”

At this, Cloud’s face contorts even more, his muscles tightening. He uncrosses his arms, hands dropping down to his sides in fists. He doesn’t hide the emotions in his voice this time, and his tone makes Tifa worry. “What does it matter?”

“Cloud.” Tifa steps back in, putting herself between Cloud and Barret and putting her hands gently on Cloud’s shoulders. Barret draws away, letting Tifa fall in. Cloud stays put. When he sees Tifa standing before him, his eyes soften but only a little bit. She tells him, sternly, “Barret has been like  _ family  _ to me. You can trust him, really.”

Cloud stares past Tifa, at Barret, who stands behind her but keeps his eyes locked firmly on Cloud. Beneath her hands, she feels Cloud’s shoulders relax. But his face remains as it was--a deep scowl. He says, “He shouldn’t take it personally. I don’t really trust anyone.”

“Well then,” Barret chides with another bitter laugh, “maybe me and SOLDIER boy  _ do  _ have something in common.” Barret sits down at Jessie’s desk, placing his heavy gun arm on the table with a loud bang. He nods to Cloud and says, “Now I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. Tifa and I have some private business to discuss.”

Cloud doesn’t move, at first. But when his eyes meet Tifa’s, pleading with him to cooperate, Cloud obliges. As he leaves, taking the elevator back up to the top floor, he tells Tifa, “See you back at the apartment.” He doesn’t turn around completely to face her when he says this.

Once Barret is sure Cloud is out of ear shot, he warns Tifa, “I’d watch your back around that SOLDIER, Tifa. I get a bad feeling about him.”

“We’ve known each other for years,” Tifa tries to reassure Barret. “He’s just… old habits die hard, you know? I think it’s hard for him to trust people.”

Barret shakes his head. “It’s the Mako in ‘em. It does something to their heads. Makes ‘em paranoid.  _ Crazy _ .”

Tifa’s head whips around at those words. Paranoid.  _ Crazy _ . But she stays tight-lipped, not sure what to say to defend Cloud. She can’t deny that Cloud’s behavior can be strange, sometimes a little frightening--but  _ crazy _ ? No, she doesn’t think so. His time with SOLDIER changed him, and there’s no denying it; but underneath it all, he’s still Cloud. He’s still  _ her  _ Cloud, from Nibelheim.

But she can’t help but think of his Mako eyes, narrowing in suspicion at Barret. It sends chills up her spine.

Luckily, Barret changed the subject. “Tifa, you told me you were all in, right? To fight with Avalanche?”

Tifa nods. “Yeah. Why?”

Barret sighs, rubbing his temples. “I hate to do this, but… I’m gonna need a favor.  _ Big  _ one. And you’re the only person I know who can  _ get the job done _ .”

The gravity of Barret’s tone makes Tifa nervous, and she takes a seat across from him at Biggs’s cluttered workspace. With her hands tightly balled into fists on her lap, she matches Barret’s tone, quietly saying, “Okay. What do I need to do?”

  
“You better get comfortable. Because this is a  _ long  _ story… ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY this was a long one xDDD
> 
> to everyone who has made comments on the last chapter, i am SO SORRY i haven't been able to respond to you all yet!!! i am in the process of moving house and i've been writing pretty much all of my free time!! just know that i have seen your comments and i appreciate all of the compliments and feedback :)))) the messages i receive from you all make it a joy to write this fic!!! thanks so much <3333


	9. update from the author :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just letting u know this fic is not dead!!!

Hello everyone!!!!

It has been SO LONG since I've updated this story and I just wanted to provide some updates!

To be clear: this fic is NOT dead, and I have been adding to it since I last updated in June!  
I started school AND moved AND started a new job, so my writing time has been cut significantly  
since the summer. However, I've FIIIINALLY gotten into a schedule that works and I'm  
committed to this fic! I hope that I can post a real update soon (hopefully within the next week or so)  
and stick to a regular schedule from there!

I have a lot of ideas and a lot of plans for this story going forward and I'm really excited to share it :)

To the people who have kept this bookmarked even though it's been ages: THANK YOU!!!! I promise  
I have not abandoned this story and I'm committed to seeing it through! It may take me a little   
longer than I expected but I really enjoy writing it and I want to finish telling Tifa's story.

See you all soon!!!

\- Nibelheiim <3


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